#Author is less unknown as it is very highly debates

[casuallyoverdressed]

Love conquers all, for what could he not conquer?

Ciris, author unknown

[frevandrest]

Everything Wrong with Saint-Just's Introductory Scene in La Révolution française (1989)

As promised, here is an analysis of Saint-Just’s first scene from La Révolution française (1989). You can watch the scene (with English subtitles) here. It sadly misses the dramatic entrance part, but everything else is there. SPOILER: This analysis will not, in fact, cover everything wrong because there’s so much trash you can’t adequately address it in only 1000 words. 

In the scene, we see a young man with that hair rushing down the steps of the Convention (in what will be his signature dramatic! style). He pushes people way without even looking at them. There is someone at the rostrum, and many people wait to address the Convention. Saint-Just doesn’t give a fuck. “I demand to speak.” Some deputies murmur a weak protest, but they are shit out of luck because it’s time to introduce a new character, and we need to know what a jerk he is. So of course he’s granted the word. 

At first, nobody pays attention, but “just like you, I would die for this Republic”, seems to work. He delivers the speech (which contains maybe two lines from the actual one), and by the end, Marat claps, the Convention claps, Danton and Girondins are suspicious; Robespierre is in love. Camille, oh Camille, does he know he’s just been replaced? Saint-Just pouts slightly (my interpretation) but doesn’t show much emotion. Next scene: Louis receives news that he’s being put on trial. Good job, new boy. 

As first scenes go, this is a good introduction to Saint-Just as depicted in the film. But it’s also very wrong for SJ as a historical personality (what we know of him). Which sucks, because it’s not like it’s impossible to make an unsympathetic yet historically accurate SJ, if one wants to go that route. See, Saint-Just in La Révolution française is a prop; he’s not a character with his own complexities, goals or motivations. He is just there to be pretty and evil, and to take Robespierre away from Camille.

So, why is this introduction wrong? 

Let us remember that this was Saint-Just’s very first speech at the Convention. He got elected days after his 25th birthday; he was the youngest out there. Also, even with Robespierre’s support (that some claim he already enjoyed), he was an unknown; a peasant provincial from Picardie barely out of his adolescence. He wanted to prove himself and demonstrate that he was a worthy representative. Being rude and pushing people away is not really a good way to achieve that. 

Here’s the thing about Saint-Just: despite all stereotypes of the contrary, he respected authority. However, he only respected authority that he felt deserved to be respected. In 1792, “monarchy” was not it. But National Convention? Revolutionary government? Of course he respected it. He fought so much to get there, and he respected the place he was given. 

Throwing his weight around, pushing people away, demanding to speak when someone else is at the rostrum, disobeying order... It was really not Saint-Just. He hated commotion and fights that happened so often at the Jacobin club. Even on 9 Thermidor, when Tallien interrupted him and shit hit the fan, he continued to attempt to deliver the speech. They pushed him, and he kept trying to speak, without, I don’t know, punching someone in the face (La Révolution française Saint-Just totally would, which is, admittedly, one of the many, many many reasons why it sucks that they shortened and condensed Thermidor). 

The film uses “blame Saint-Just for Robespierre’s turn to darkness” approach. SJ is there to encourage Robespierre into cruelty and cold violence, and, if Robespierre starts to doubt even for a moment, to reassure him that yes, this is how things should be done, you are right Max, let’s kill them all, but particularly Camille; I can’t stand that guy for having you first  ridiculing my poetry (wait... SJ’s poetry wasn’t in the film. Why does he hate Camille, again?) Who knows. The only explanation the film provides is that Camille is Good and Saint-Just is Evil, so of course he’d want to get rid of him. 

Now, let us see about the speech itself.

The Speech

The speech Saint-Just delivers in the film contains maybe a few lines from the actual speech (notably: “this man should reign, or die”). I don’t have a problem with them not replicating the speech word for word because it followed on what other deputies talked about (which we didn’t hear)*, and because nobody has time for Antoine’s ramblings about antiquity. (And it would take around 10 minutes to act, which would probably provide us with more glorious shots of Robespierre falling in love being impressed, but it would take too much of the running time. I get that.)

So, in theory, I am fine with shortening the speech and paraphrasing, as long as the meaning and content is there. Which... it did on a surface level while also missing the point substantially.  

*Not showing SJ addressing what others said before him was understandable (condensing runtime), but it’s another thing that made it seem like he didn’t listen nor paid attention what others were doing. Also, it’s a missed opportunity to characterize him as a jerk full of himself, since his real speech basically opened with: “all that the previous guy said is bullshit, and here’s why”. 

Speech in the film: I would die for the Republic and I would fight the enemies of the Republic. We all know the name of the enemy, and I, like none here, am ready to fight against this enemy. Louis is a symbol of traitors among us. We should not hesitate; the king is an usurper. 

In short, speech in the film is, kind of, less about Louis and more about what SJ will be important later: his own sense of revolutionary righteousness and for weeding out “traitors” from the Convention. 

Another issue with the speech is that it wasn’t just about the speech - it was part of Saint-Just’s introductory scene, so we had to learn about his character through the speech. In the film, SJ is rude, cruel and cares only about... well, we are not sure, because there are no motivations whatsoever, but he is there to push Max when something bad needs to be done. I feel that his rudeness during the introductory scene and the way the speech was delivered fulfil this purpose nicely. However, I am not sure that we actually understand what Saint-Just’s speech was about, except vague “we must kill the king” vibe. 

The Aftermath

The scene following Saint-Just’s speech is that of Louis, a doting father, reading a book to his son. Men come and rudely tell him to send the child away. He is to be put on trial. The implication? Saint-Just’s speech won the crowd over and they decided to kill Louis, or at least put him on trial. 

In reality, while Saint-Just’s speech was highly noticed (his real-life dramatic entrance into Convention), the deputies did NOT listen to him. The whole point of the speech was that Louis should not be put on trial - trials are for the citizens, which he is not. Louis’ crime is not treason - the monarchy is a crime in itself. Saint-Just argued against the trial. Yes, his speech was highly influential but presenting it in this way puts way too much weight on this newcomer’s words and implies he was the key factor behind the trial.  

Other Observations

- There is a long debate among historians whether Robespierre was present for Saint-Just’s first speech on 13 November 1792. (I think the conclusion is “probably not”.) But I don’t mind this change, if nothing else, for those glorious shots of Robespierre’s heart eyes and Camille’s “wtf did this guy come from and why is Max looking at him like that?”

- Marat. It is true that he generally praised Saint-Just as an orator, but he disagreed with this speech (Marat was for trial). 

- The reason why this post is dedicated to SJ’s first scene is because I was asked/challenged to write about it. It doesn’t mean that his other scenes were any better (I’d say they were worse). In fact, the entire SJ’s character was a Thermidorized mess. 

- That being said, I don’t hate this SJ. I cannot; LRF was my introduction to the whole Frev thing and will always have a special place. Christopher Thompson was ok, particularly in some aspects of SJ. However, the whole thing was a mess and it should be criticized. 

- Hair. I promised to dedicate one full paragraph to SJ’s hair, but I... can’t. I simply cannot. I am sorry. I tried, but the words failed me. 

- This was more fun that it should have been and there are so many things I didn’t get to say (the entire performance and what this scene means for SJ as a character in the film, a more detailed analysis of the speech and comparison with the real one, etc.) But it did show that I can still vomit write 1000+ words about anything that I have any interest in, which is... good to know, I guess? (Let’s just say that I won’t be winning any SJ contest prizes for laconicism). 

[dreamsmp-au-ideas]

Fire Emblem AU

First house I want to focus on is the *insert drumroll here*

Green Gator House, where those who hail from the SMP Empire reside!

The SMP empire is the oldest empire in the continent of Carmine. While it once ruled over the entire continent, it lost that power after The Badlands and L’Mmanberg were formed. Despite this, SMP has the most land and all of its citizens are proud of its rich history. The Gator is the house animal because of its toughness and strength, with high populations at SMP’s beaches. This years Green Gators consist of the following

Dream- Dream is the future emperor of the SMP and is considered a prodigy in his speed and skill with lances. He’s generally friendly with most students, despite being distant towards those of other houses. Dream always wears a green hood to cover up his hair for reasons unknown to others. However, underneath his jokes is someone who is desperate to change the status quo, especially how those with and without crests are treated. Dream is totally planning to start a war but he’s only doing it for the good of everyone. He disguises himself with his mask when he needs to work with his less morally standing allies. These allies are people who worship a mysterious god *coughtheeggcough* which gives them great power in exchange for the blood of humans. Dream doesn’t like working with them but he has no choice. Dream in his mask and longer cloak becomes known as The Green Demon. While Dream does have genuinely good reasons for starting a war and his resolve to achieve a better future for his nation won’t waver, he does sometimes ponder it after hanging out with his classmates. Dream specializes in lances, swords, and riding. He has a weakness in faith and heavy armor. He doesn’t like being weighed down. He has two crests.

George- George is Dreams loyal retainer and one of his best friends. George was a commoner until Dream just happened to see him compete in a tournament and was like “I want that one”. Thus, George was taken in to train as his retainer and he became fast friends with Dream and Sapnap. George kinda stands out as one of the few commoners in The Green Gators, not that anyone would dare give him crap about it in front of Dream. George is one of the few people to know what Dream is planning to do and his main reason why. That is to say, why Dream always has his hair covered. George is considered the least chaotic one in the Dream Team, as him, Dream, and Sapnap are called. He’s well known for sleeping in the weirdest places, like in the middle of lunch. Despite this, he is not to be underestimated with his skill in bows and riding wyverns. George is colorblind which he accidentally keeps a secret purely because he forgot to tell his housemates. George specializes in bows and flying. He has a weakness in riding. He has no crests.

Sapnap: Sapnap is Dreams childhood friend because of their families close connections. That is to say, Sapnaps father is the financial advisor to Dreams father. However, Sapnap really doesn’t want to do that and would much rather become a general someday. Sapnap has great talent with reason and is called an arsonist by his classmates after he set their lunch on fire when he was stuck with cooking duty. In his defense, he thought that would make the lunch cook faster and didn’t consider the possibility of fire. Sapnap is a friendly prankster but he does have his worries. Dream and George have been acting more distant lately and he has no idea why. All they are offering is vague platitudes or just evading his questions. Sapnap specializes in reason (fire) and brawling. Weakness in flying and riding. He has a crest.

Puffy: Puffy is a noblewoman who has always dreamed of becoming a knight. Her family specializes in overseas trading but she would really rather stay at home and defend others. She’s one of the oldest out of her classmates and is quickly dubbed as the mom friend. Puffy takes a shine to her future emperor and calls him her duckling after he started coming over to spar with her. Puffy also becomes fast friend with Niki, even though they are in separate houses. Puffy has a lot of friends in other houses. Perks of being used to interacting with those different from herself from trading, she supposes. Puffy has a strong sense of honor and believes very highly in fairness. She specializes in heavy armor and axes but she’s not so hot at flying. She’s not a big fan of heights. She has no crest. Basically, she’s a tanky character who is good at taking physical hits but has very low speed

Schlatt- Schlatts family used to be a part of L’Manberg and he was close friends with Wilbur. That is until his noble family made a risky investment and it backfired. Hard. When none of the nobles would help, nobles from the SMP offered financial aid in exchange for them leaving L’Manberg for the SMP. Schaltt’s family agreed, but their financial position is still very fragile. Schlatts friendship with Wilbur fizzled out after that, mostly due to Schlatts bitterness at the nobles of L’Manberg. Schlatt is also one of the few who can tell somethings off with Wilbur eve before he goes all hunched over eyepatch dude during the timeskip. However, Schlatts not good with feelings so he doesn’t approach Wilbur about it. Schlatt is a cynic about the concept of an honorable noble and has major money hoarding issues. He’s constantly trying to come up with new ways to make some quick cash off of people because who knows when he’ll need some extra? He’s friends with Quackity and Tubbo or as he puts it “The only nobles here he can tolerate because they aren’t self righteous pricks” Schlatt has strengths in reason(fire) and swords with a weakness in faith. He has no crest.

Quackity- Quackity is a noble of a minor house. He’s set to be the next leader of his territory after graduation so he’s mostly here to have one last hurrah of having fun and prepare for leadership. Quackity tells loads of jokes and may appear not to take things seriously. The important thing to note is appears. Quackity wants the best for his people and is willing to do whatever it takes to be a good leader for them. He secretly does a lot of research in past rulers and how they succeeded. Quackity does goof off a lot in between classes, which mostly involves helping out Schlatt with his latest scam. Or trying to talk him out of it if he thinks its a bit too immoral. If he’s not with Schlatt, Quackity likes hanging out with Sapnap as well. Quackity has strengths in axes and authority with a weakness in bows. He has a crest.

Tubbo- Tubbo is also a noble of a minor house. He’s a middle child in a lot of siblings. He’s at the academy mostly so he can figure out what he’s going to do with his life. He’s one of the younger students there. His and Tommy’s families are actually fairly close due to both of them being close to their respective borders. Despite their families trading a lot Tommy and Tubbo has never met. They quickly became inseparable at the academy, despite Tommy being busy with his duties as Wilbur’s retainer. It sure would be a shame if they were separated and forced to fight each other in a war, wouldn’t it? Tubbo loves to hang out at the greenhouse or cook with Karl. He’s extremely skilled at magic, through hard work mostly. Tubbo has strengths in both faith and reason (wind magic) and has weaknesses in axes and brawling. He’s a classic squishy wizard character who cannot take many hits due to low defense. He has a crest.

If Karl decides to teach The Green Gators he has two options before the timeskip. He can either side with Dream or go against him along with everyone else except George. Each side has pros and cons that could be debated about all day and night but that’s neither here nor there. This is mostly just to cover the students and what their generally like and backstories because this is already long enough without going into the plot. Sorry about that by the way. Feel free to tell me if you want this shortened.

Ah I remember why I didn’t pick up the game. It’s because I’m going to get attached to all the characters and won’t be able to save them all and oh no I’m crying.

ANyways. This is good. I like everyone’s characters in here and I’m excited for more. Also ouch on the Clingy Duo angst. Oh god. Oh no.

[sennextheassasinkingoflight]

The Bard and The Witcher

So, here’s that soulmate song based fix it fic I wrote last night. I hope you all enjoy it. Can be read as platonic or romantic Geraskier Rated T for mild swearing as per AO3 guidelines, probably could have gone with General but ehh. 

This story was highly inspired by "Welly Boots" by The Amazing Devil. If it looks like a line came from the song it probably did! There is one or two direct quotes, and a lot of pulls. So if it even looks like it came from the song it did and give full credit and praise to Joey Batey and the rest of The Amazing Devil for creating it!Also this I realize is a song-fic turned soulmate au, fix-it- fic gone wild. I reference A few other soulmate tropes early on, and I don't remember where they all came from. If you recognize them and know where they came from will you pretty please drop me a comment so I can give proper respects to the authors and make sure to cite/source/ recommend them properly??? Shout out to Thatrandomace who wrote "And The Sky Was Finally Blue" I make mention of the trope from this story in mine. It's an excellent story go read it. :) Thank you all so much! I hope you like this one. Cross posted on AO3 at SennexTheAssasinKingOfLight.

The Bard and The Witcher Everyone has a soulmate, this isn’t something that is debated. It is a fact. Everyone thinks that you know your soulmate by words written like ink on skin, by a symbol that represents them, by seeing color or the color of your soulmates eyes, by the way they smell, or any number of other methods. The truth is, when you meet your soulmate your souls become tied. Most people do not notice this event.There is no outward change, you may not be romantically inclined or involved with your soulmate. Some live their entire lives either never meeting their partner or they are in close enough proximity with them that they never feel the negative effects that lead to knowing one’s soulmate. When you leave your soulmate your soul stays behind with them (See the final note). Likewise theirs remains with you. Should you and your soulmate become separated by great distances and time it is likely that both parties will die unless they are reunited. This near death experience is often the only way to know your soulmate.

Sometimes if one partner is recorded as being especially strong or especially emotionless then they often survive the separation. Witchers, for instance, always survive this separation while their partners do not. It is thought this is because of their mutinigans or perhaps because of their training. Whatever the reason, it is unknown. You may be wondering if there is any other way than this near death experience for soulmates to know if they’ve met. There is not, save perhaps the whispering of children. Usually one does not know about their soul tie until they’ve begun to die, after they have seperated. However, there is time to be reunited before death occurs.

Separated, soulmates often state that they noticed changes in their behaviors. Those that were reunited noted that they believe the changes in themselves were those that their partner records as having lost. It starts as a little thing, with their souls not near, they begin to lose parts of themselves. It may be as simple as a desire that is usually very strong, such as the desire to watch the sunrise, and then it will grow until parts of their very beings fade. By then it is often too late to find one's soulmate. For most, they have but two months when they’ve begun to lose their essence, their main personality traits, their desire and will to live. It is of note that some scholars believe that the soul left behind often manifests as a ghost, a spirit or spectre, that cannot be killed by a Witcher or otherwise.

Should members of the soul tie find one another all damage is repairable over time. In one another's company they often grow stronger and healthier. Note, that the length of time recorded for members of a soul tie to die is veritable and has been reported to change depending on three major aspects of the partners relationship. The first is the length and duration of time the soulmates have known one another, the intimacy of their relationship regardless of its nature (Romantic or otherwise), and the way by which they depart from one another’s company.

Should soulmates meet briefly and in passing they are likely to live a near normal duration of life. This is believed to be because the souls have become tangled but do not know the others as more than a stranger passing by. These often go unnoticed, and undocumented. As such there is little more to be said on the matter. Also note, because soulmate relationships are not always intimate, that this may play a part in strangers meetings. How can one be tied to one they do not know?

Should soulmates know one another for a long time and depart on loving and mutual terms it takes a much longer duration of time for the soulmates to pass. They often are not burdened by personality changes or the other effects of the separation, especially if the intent to reunite is strong between both parties.

Should they know one another for a long period of time and depart in anger, and non mutual desire, death is likely to arrive much quicker for both parties.

It is often recorded that in such cases where the soulmates have known one another for long periods of time that as they die and their desires fade, they take on and exchange traits with their soulmate. We speculate that this is the way by which the gods may attempt to draw soulmates back to one another. It is usually subtle and unless soulmates recognize these traits they may never be reunited with their partners. However, if they do recognize the traits, and ‘hauntings’ of the others spirit, they may yet have time to reunite.

One final note on soulmates, it is believed strongly that children, newborns to slightly older children , 0-7 can see your soulmate's spirit as it follows you. Consistent reports from children is what leads to the belief that the hauntings that soulmates report in their partners absence is in fact their soulmates soul. Some rare adults have also reported this phenomenon. Often these adults are free spirits that are not bound by the laws of normalcy and maintain a love for the beauty of the world around them.

Adults like me, dear reader.

This is the story of a bard named Jaskier and his witcher Geralt of Rivia.

The Bard and The Witcher.

At the time of their deplorable and heart wrenching separation neither knew they were so bonded. They had traveled apart at times, sometimes for long increments, but at those times they always intended to reunite even if they were unaware of their own desires. Eventually the days turned to weeks and both remained largely unfazed.

The poet anguished and from his pain brought forth into this world such well-known and beloved songs as “Her Sweet Kiss” among others. He continued to play for courts and taverns, inns, and any who would listen. He played until his voice broke and his fingers ached, he danced until his legs gave way beneath him. Eventually the bard regained himself, though his identity would be forever tied to his witcher.  After all, twenty two years of companionship is not so easily forgotten. For a while he returned to teach at oxenfurt as an alumni and one day decided to leave. He would go to the coast. I believe this decision was made when he began to notice the small changes becoming greater, when the soul following him was more attentive.

Alternatively the witcher's anger eventually ebbed away and guilt took its place. He often brooded and sulked as was his custom and habit before the viscount turned bard had begun traveling with him. Often he found himself listening for news of the bard sometimes this made him feel – he would not admit it to anyone – at these times he would find a beast of one kind or another and expand his energy by dispatching it with reckless abandon and unbridled restraint. The result was new scars on an already marred flash.

T’was narry six months past their departure that the Bard and the Witcher began to notice changes in their case, unlike previous recorded cases, the symptoms (shall we call them dear reader?) are more prominent and drastic from the start. We may attribute this to the very passionate nature of the lover bard and the overprotective silent fondness the witcher most definitely harbors for him. The bard found that he often wanted to speak less and the witcher more. The Bard enjoyed company less, the witcher more. These were not subtle changes. The bard knowing and putting stock in the romanticized records that detail most accurately the tales of soulmates drew but one conclusion: That he had known his soulmate intimately and was now separate from them. It would be a little over a year before the full effects began to wear on either.

Even as he descended the mountain the bard felt as though he was being watched. When he looked there was never anything there. It was like there was something in the corner of his eye but when he turned to see it, it would jump out of his line of sight. It was fast. But it was there. He didn’t know what it was, only that there was a presence with him at all times. Whenever he looked in the mirror he’d catch the briefest flash of a shadow. It didn’t frighten him. Sometimes he could swear he could feel the coolest touch against his skin. This touch did not occur often so when it did it often elicited a reaction from the bard. Often the distraction saved him from some kind of dangerous circumstance. When he began to notice the shifts in his personality, he set out for the coast. He knew he hadn’t much time left for the world.

He arrived at the coast very near sunset. The horizon was painted in golds and reds. He hated it. It made him angry the way gold and red reflected on the water. And yet, there was something haunting and beautiful about it. It reminds him of the day he thinks he left his soulmate behind. He isn’t a fool. He settles in near a village. He doesn’t stay in it. This is easier with his sudden aversion to people. He still composes and he still sings, and plays with all the fervor he ever had. This he hasn’t lost yet. So he knows that while his life is fading and the colors are muting around him, he has time still.

One night while playing for a gathering in the city square the bard nearly has a heart attack. He’s playing something for the people to dance to. They’ve started asking him to play at event’s like tonight's wedding. So of course he agrees. He’s coming to the end of the song and he fumbles a note, regains his composure and continues. A fellow musician gives him a look but he just shrugs and looks back at the corner of the square occupied by 3 young children and what looks like Geralt, only it can’t be. He’d know if the witcher was here. He can’t hear anything from this distance. So he watches, and then as Geralt turns his back on them to go wherever he intends to go one of them tries to catch him by his leg, the child falls through. Geralt smiles the kind of smile that is reserved for children and on occasion Jaskier. Gently he kneels down and says something. He swallows, his mouth suddenly very dry. He had thought, but now he knew. Geralt was his soulmate and his soul had saved his life, had put shivers down his spine, had walked beside him all these months. He turns back to the musicians. He has to focus. People are looking at him strangely so he smiles too large and sings louder.

The children approached him sometime later. One of them, a short boy with freckles hands him a light blue Forget Me Not with a Yellow dandelion.

“I was asked to please give these to you. But I can't tell you who told me Mister. He said it was a secret.” Jaskier kneels to be at eye level with them,

“Thank you. I think I know who they are from.” He smiles a bit sadly, eyes soft and understanding. Underneath it all is just a touch of anger. Anger that one man could steal his entire life. He had given it freely enough and then it was tossed aside like a chicken bone after supper. And now, that same man would be the reason for his death.

“ He also said to tell you,” the little girl chimes in putting her hands behind her back and bouncing on the balls of her bare feet, “that a storm is coming and you need to make sure you have your books in order.”

“He said somtin about the orners too.” The other boy, missing a few teeth, says happily.

“Really? Well I have a way of waterproofing my books when I’m done with a song. Maybe that's what he meant. And you little miss, if a storm is coming you ought to put your storm boots on.”

“I’ve lost em Mister.”

“Lost them? Well then you ought to put on a heavy cloak at least. Else you’ll be soaked right through.”

Then he stands and corrals them back to their parents. A glance at the horizon tells him that there is a physical storm coming, but the mess in his head and his heart tell him perhaps it’s an entirely different kind of storm. When he returns to his home, a sturdy little shack with a fire pit in the middle, a table and two chairs on one side and bed on the other, a small wardrobe beside it and a small shelf with kitchen supplies, he falls tiredly into his bed. Absently he sets his lute against the wardrobe from his perch atop his blankets. Eventually he sits up and removes his boots.

“I know you’re there. I saw you with the children earlier. I know you can hear me. I think you can anyways. There aren't many recordings of adults seeing their soulmates' souls. Can you talk to me? Oh come on. Seriously? Is there a rule that says you can’t let me see you? All these months knowing you were there, but never seeing you. Please just come out from wherever you're hiding.” Geralt’s spirit does. It stands before him with a cocked head and calculating gaze.

“So you can show yourself.” A stiff nod is all the response he gets. “Oh. Just as silent then. Or maybe I can’t hear you.” The spirit says something but he can’t hear it. “Well then, at least I can see you I suppose. Does he or, er, you know that we’re bonded?” A hesitation, a scowl, and finally a nod. “ Huh, I wonder if he’ll come looking after me. I mean Witchers don’t die from separation like the rest of us do. He probably doesn’t care enough to bother. Besides he doesn't put much stock in this kind of thing anyways.” The spirit frowns and shakes its head vigorously, but Jaskier only laughs. He is at peace. He won’t go seeking the other out.

He begins to change and the witcher's spirit turns his back. “Oh, really. Interesting. Your welcome to stay where I can see you, and you don’t have to, oh whatever. Do as you please.” Geralt's soul turns back to him and nods. He perches on the end of Jaskier’s bed that night, and as the days go by he takes to laying beside him with an arm around him. And though Jaskier can’t feel it it is oddly comforting.

He sees the way the spirit smiles at him when he plays. He can see the way he interacts with the children The little girl from before approaches him while he plays. He leans down to hear her speak. They’re out on the beach collecting shells, and he is just enjoying the day. The salt ruins his strings and he has to take great care in cleaning his instrument when he's done, but it’s worth it to watch the children dance in the sand.

“He,” she looks over her shoulder at the spectre, “Asked me to tell you he’s proud of you, the way you’ve grown up.” She says giggling and running away. He sputters fingers playing several wrong chords before he stops all together. The witcher's spirit openly laughs at him in silence. Jaskier can’t help but smile back.  

He can feel his desire to play begin to ebb. It won't be long now. This is the most important part of himself. That night he gets drunk and he plays louder and more energetically than he has in a very long time. Suddenly it’s like he is young all over again. He plays and sings with the energy he had when he first began, loud and long into the night. His voice rumbles through the room. Geralt's ghost smiles and watches him from the dark corners of the room.

Soon after his health begins to fail. He takes to sitting in the small garden he’s made and listening to the waves or remaining in bed. He still plays, gently to himself, but the music doesn’t come as easily as it once did. One of the villagers takes care of him. She asks if she can write anyone for him. If he knows who his soulmate is. He smiles softly, a bit sadly, and weeps. “ He sent me away long ago. I do not think he will come for me, even should a letter find him. Thank you though.” She frowns and leaves him for the day. When she has gone he has conversations with Geralt's ghost. The spirit is sad, and Jaskier understands why. It will remain in this world and he will not. He was very good at working out the other’s meanings. “Don’t look at me like that, you’ll have my soul won’t you? Will it stay here?” The Spirit nods with pursed lips. Unhappy.

I learned later, dear reader, that at about these same times, a similar occurrence happened with the witcher.

Geralt often heard one sided conversations around him since being seperated from Jaskier. They always came from children. Young children. Usually they were innocent enough conversations but they made him stop and wonder. Such as the one now. There was no one with these children. They were at their own table in the inn. They kept looking at him and smiling. He smiled back and promptly looked away; he didn’t need upset parents. So he turned his ear toward them instead and listened.

“What’s it like?” “Like snowfall?” “Oh. love. Like when momma puts us to bed at night, or kisses my skinned knee?” “I get it. That's so magical.” “What are you Mister?” “A soul?” “A musician?” “Why can’t anyone else see you?” ``A soulmate….. yeah I can tell him.”  

“Fuck.” It’s a muttered whisper against his ale. He can put it together easily enough. Jaskier was his soulmate. His soul was speaking to those children and now the oldest, a boy around seven, is stalking toward him. He stiffens. “Mister Witcher I was told to tell you, “ That I’ll be with you all along, as long as you are kind To those who are not strong and cannot find —”” A surprised mother grabs his shoulders. “My Apologies Witcher.” “ S’fine.” He mutters with a polite nod. The scent of fear was on her but it was offset by simple uncertainty. Unlike the boy. He’d been unafraid. The next morning he set off into the brisk autumn woods.

It's been a very long time since he craved interaction with others, but it is more intense these days. He wishes he didn’t know who his soulmate was. It would be so much easier. He knows as a witcher he will survive their separation, and if it were someone else he wouldn’t feel the need to go find them. But this is Jaskier. And though he doesn’t understand why this separation has been the one to make the nature of their relationship known, he knows he can’t let Jaskier die. So he tries to think of where the bard would have gone. He knows he’d been a fool on the mountain. The least he could do was apologize, and stay near enough that Jaskier gets to live his life out completely. He is near Oxenfurt he realizes as he looks at the signpost at this junction. He sets his jaw and decides to make a stop. Maybe they’ll know something at the college.

They don’t. He has been gone a month. He’d just up and left one day after the end of the last set of courses. One of the professors suggests he tries the coast, he vaguely remembers a comment about salt water being bad for lute strings. So he heads towards the coast. He keeps his ears out for anything, any sign that the bard had come this way.

It’s cold, even to him. He pushes onward. The snow is nearly knee deep anywhere off the road. He’ll be at the sea in another day or two. He sets his jaw in determination and freezes when it feels like a heaviness has settled upon his shoulders, around his neck. He looks down and can see nothing there. He looks around. Strange things like this had been happening since the boy had approached him. He feels foolish, but it does feel warmer where the weight is, like he is wearing a scarf.

“Thank you.” he whispers to the wind and continues on.

Two night’s later he’s looking out upon the sea. The winter moon reflects brightly in dark and turning depths. The stars are hidden behind clouds. He enters an inn and is given a room. As he lays there that night, he realizes he has no idea which direction to go, up or down. He growls into his pillow. Then he freezes, it feels like there is a hand on his face, more accurately like his face is being cradled.

He sighs,“ I know you've come to the coast. I know I sent you away so you left me behind. I feel like I’m still standing on that mountain. How do I find you bard? Can you see my ghost? Hear it? That would be just right for you. You’d just be one of those rare cases.” He growls again staring at the ceiling. The feeling on his face shifts gently, like it’s trying to comfort or say something. The heat moves and rests over his heart instead. “I don’t understand.” He gruffs. “ I don’t speak in metaphors and allegories. I wish you could speak plainly. If you're even there. I can’t believe I am having a conversation with...”

He sleeps fitfully that night. He dreams of blue and yellow flowers, and of a town with a statue in its square. When he wakes he asks the innkeeper about such a town. She says yes, a few weeks down the road there is a town with a statue like that, she doesn’t know about the flowers though. She wishes him well, “Good luck hunting witcher” and turns away. He pauses, when was the last time he thought of killing something, of actively seeking out a creature, a contract. Suddenly he wonders how much time Jaksier has. He rides fast, as fast as he can to the next town. He sleeps little and eats less.

The Bard doesn’t have any idea that the Witcher has been seeking him out.  

“There's a man in town, causing a ruckus.” She says gently, as she enters Jaskiers house. “That so?” He smiles from where he is sitting up in bed. “Leave the door open.” “Yes. He was just riding into town as I left. Kicked over some crates in a fit of rage after asking one of the men something. He seemed rather upset about something. Very strong too.” He looks at her and furrows his brow. “What did he look like? I'm sure he means no harm.” Geralt's spirit is nodding at him, encouraging, making gestures that seem to say “go to town”. He smiles to himself, defending the man even now. Even when he doesn’t know it. “White hair, it was long. He had a beard. He was wearing all black and had two-” “Go and get him. Tell him Dandelion wishes to see him. Go, quickly. He should be calm when you say that. Please. Go!” There is urgency in his voice despite it’s tiredness. She looks at him with shock. “Your soulmate.” “Please. His name is Geralt.” His voice breaks and she runs from the door.

He tries to fight it but his eyes grow tired. He leans back against the headboard. A little nap wouldn’t hurt. But he wants to see Geralt, the flesh and blood Geralt. The spirit beside him is trying to keep him engaged. A warmth on his leg where his hand rests, keeps Jaskier grounded. But he knows there isn’t much time left. He knows today is his last day. He wants to see the sun on the ocean. Slowly he forces himself to his feet with a blanket wrapped around him. He holds himself against the wall for support and makes his way to the door. He smiles, and sits in the chair in his garden. His legs give out as soon as he makes it to the chair. He looks across the horizon, the sun will set with red and gold tonight, he can see the tinges of color in the air. It’s early evening. He smiles, and closes his eyes. He can hear a horse whiney nearby. He is proud of the witcher. So very proud. He sleeps.

When the Witcher discovered the bard with closed eyes in the garden he panicked. He is loath to admit such, but he did.

“Dandelion?” He calls, hurriedly dismounting Roach. Geralt kneels beside the smaller man and exhales a shaky breath, the bard is still breathing. He smiles gently. He looks to the woman that had brought him here.

“Thank you.”  She nods. “I’ll watch over him now.” “Of course. Please let me know if you need anything. You should stay near him at all times. I mean no offense Mister Witcher sir, only I know soulmates can die even near one another if it's too late.” “I’ll stay close.” She nods and begins her trek back to the village. He brushes stray locks from Jaskiers face. “Stay with me. I’m here. Stay here with me.” He whispers gently against his head, pressing a kiss to his temple. “Wake up so I can apologize and then tell you off for coming to the coast alone.” He pulls away and lifts the bard, the wind is beginning to blow. The salt stings his nose some but he ignores it. He will ignore it forever for Jaskier.

To pass the time, he tells stories to the sleeping bard, to the souls he isn’t sure are still there. Do they remain outside their bodies when soulmates are reunited? He doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. He tells another story, recalls another memory and laughs at their past antics. He shivers despite himself when it feels like fingers have traced his spine.

“Damn it, Jaskier wake up. This isn’t fair. I won’t be alright if you don’t wake up. Jask. Please.” He stands and paces, keeping his back to the bard. He tries to focus on a different image and throw this one to the wind. “You’re light and I’ve let you become snuffed out. And I am selfish, how will I deal with people without you there to soften the blows, to fight for me?” He clenches his fists and his jaw. He’s very near crying, something he can’t remember having ever done. He never thought he would beg for someone to live and survive. He never thought he would need someone, but the thought of Jaskier dying, or it being his fault, it’s unbearably heavy.

“You’re strong enough to live on Geralt.” Jaskier whispers gently, half awake. A small smile tugging at his lips. Geralt smiles back. He holds Jaskiers hand until he falls asleep again. He has hope that the bard is getting better.

When the Bard finally awoke for good, it was to a very distraught witcher keeping vigil at his bedside.

“I’ll live, Geralt. Now please, water.” The witcher obeys and retrieves a glass for him. He drinks slowly.  Jaskier knows he will follow the witcher wherever he goes. But until he is well, he intends to make Geralt work for his spoken forgiveness. His heart has already forgiven the other.

A few years later, Jaskier walks barefoot through the sand with a smile on his face. Geralt has been specifically asked for a contract. They don’t separate often, usually Jaskier follows him, but this contract is particularly tricky and Geralt doesn’t want him in harm's way. When they do seperate, for any length of time, it goes like this.

“Will you miss me, like you did all those years ago? Like you did when you thought I was gone?” He asks looking up at Geralt who watches the sun set beside him.

“I'm terrified, you’ll be gone.” Geralt responds, glancing down at him. “You won’t leave me behind again? Won’t send me away and act like you don’t care?” “I won’t, Jaskier. Never again.” “You’ll come back?” “I will. I will come back.”

When the Witcher returned to their home on the coast after his contract he did so with apprehension in his chest. It had taken much longer than he thought to travel there, dispatch the creature and return. Every step closer to their home on the coast was taken with dread. “If you're not here, I can’t carry on.” He whispers to the night air. His hope is fading, there is no candle lit for his return, no noise from within the house. He’s about to enter the house when a soft sound catches his ear, he turns, and there is Jaskier strumming his lute at the gate on the far end of the garden. He smiles and the bard smiles back.

“Welcome home.”

The Bard and The Witcher, never leave the other without the intent to return. Both parties are properly afraid of what might happen should they leave one another on such deplorable terms as that time on the mountain. More often than not the Bard finds reasons to tag along even on those dangerous contracts. He wrote a ballad about this event in his life, and he continues to write ballads among other things now. He sees others' souls as he had his own and offers them warnings and advice if they will have it. The Witcher does not stop him.

The times have changed, and the world around them has shifted, but they still travel together, The Bard and The Witcher. They always come home to the coast when they can. For it is a special place for them, a place of survival and memory, of love and hope. I must leave you now, dear reader, for this tale has many more adventures to come. The night is growing late and my candle is burning low and my darling Witcher calls for me from the other room.

P.S. I write this with my witcher leaning over my shoulder, dear reader, but I thought I ought to tell you that when your soulmate is a witcher  you live as long as they do. What a pleasant surprise. I should leave you now, Geralt is being ne—

[thefloatingstone]

Somebody asked me for some anime recs. I asked them what kind of genres they’re into but I’m not getting a reply, so here are just some general recommendations for good stuff to watch.

I assume they meant new anime so I’m only focusing on those.

Made in Abyss (2017) (warning for Body horror, violence and gore)

The Abyss—a gaping chasm stretching down into the depths of the earth, filled with mysterious creatures and relics from a time long past. How did it come to be? What lies at the bottom? Countless brave individuals, known as Divers, have sought to solve these mysteries of the Abyss, fearlessly descending into its darkest realms. The best and bravest of the Divers, the White Whistles, are hailed as legends by those who remain on the surface.

Riko, daughter of the missing White Whistle Lyza the Annihilator, aspires to become like her mother and explore the furthest reaches of the Abyss. However, just a novice Red Whistle herself, she is only permitted to roam its most upper layer. Even so, Riko has a chance encounter with a mysterious robot with the appearance of an ordinary young boy. She comes to name him Reg, and he has no recollection of the events preceding his discovery. Certain that the technology to create Reg must come from deep within the Abyss, the two decide to venture forth into the chasm to recover his memories and see the bottom of the great pit with their own eyes. However, they know not of the harsh reality that is the true existence of the Abyss.

Pros:

Ghibli artists working on the backgrounds and environments

likeable characters

crushing atmosphere

incredible world building

Really compelling mysteries

Very emotional

Cons:

The manga its based on has a lot of lolicon bullshit. But the anime has doneits best to either remove or downplay those elements as childhood innocence rather than the author being a creep

Ends without clear answers as we have to wait for season 2

Not for you if you dislike violence or body horror

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime (2018)

Thirty-seven-year-old Satoru Mikami is a typical corporate worker, who is perfectly content with his monotonous lifestyle in Tokyo. In the midst of a casual encounter with his colleague, a knife weilding maniac attacks them. Satoru, in shielding his co-worker and his co-worker’s new girlfriend, is fatally stabbed, and dies.

And then he wakes up again. But now, in the body of a blob of slime. In doing so, he acquires newfound skills—notably, the power to devour anything and mimic its appearance and abilities. He then stumbles upon the sealed Catastrophe-level monster "Storm Dragon" Veldora who had been sealed away for the past 300 years for devastating a town to ashes. Sympathetic to his predicament, Satoru befriends him, promising to assist in destroying the seal. In return, Verudora bestows upon him the name Rimuru Tempest to grant him divine protection.

With a goal now, the newly named Rimuru sets out to explore this fantasy world, stumbling into situations where other people need help, and since finding ways to live peacefully is much less hassle, Rimuru does his best to settle conflicts and help people to get along. Mostly because he’s got nothing better to do.

Pros:

Likeable, chilled out protagonist who acts and behaves like an adult

Not the average wish-fullfilment harem-in-disguise type stuff you expect from the average Isekai show

Characters focusing on trying to help each other and be kind without coming across as cheesy or unrealistic

Fun powers and “how are you gonna fix this mess?” situations

Cons:

occasional anime tiddy

Mob Psycho 100 (2016) (If you’ve seen season 1 already then watch season 2)

An Eighth-grader Shigeo "Mob" Kageyama is possibly the most powerful psychic on earth. Which is the only thing he has going for him which, in his opinion, isn’t much. Due to his powers going crazy if he gets overwhelmed by his emotions, Mob has spent his life suppressing his feelings, both negative and positive. As a result, however, Mob is an extremely socially awkward and shy person who struggles to connect to people.

The story follows Mob as he tries to find ways to better himself as a person, aided by the fake psychic Reigen who both uses Mob’s real psychic powers to exorcise ghosts, but also uses his fake con-man skill of charming people and being a smooth talker to help people fix their problems rather than have them rely on a psychic for help. He also acts as a mentor to Mob, not on how to be a better psychic, but on how to mature into a good, capable person. Because according to Reigen “Having psychic powers is just a skill. Some people can run fast, some people can can sing well, some people are good at studying, some people are funny, and some people have psychic powers.”

Now if only the assortment of Cult leaders, Ghosts, Secret organizations and Powerful psychics trying to take over the world could leave him alone.

Pros:

A subversion of the “I must get stronger!” shounen story where the character is already the strongest and needs to focus on being a better person instead.

Probably the best animated show to come out in years

Good uplifting morals

A wacky off-beat art style and sense of humour

Genuinely complex and 3 dimensional characters who are likeable

Really relatable in many ways

Cons:

I can’t think of any tbh

Then we have anime I have on my “to watch” list and come highly recommended but I haven’t seen yet. But I want to recommend them anyway

A Place Further Than The Universe  (2018)

a “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” show.

Filled with an overwhelming sense of wonder for the world around her, Mari Tamaki has always dreamt of what lies beyond the reaches of the universe. However, despite harboring such large aspirations on the inside, her fear of the unknown and anxiety over her own possible limitations have always held her back from chasing them. But now, in her second year of high school, Mari is more determined than ever to not let any more of her youth go to waste. Still, her fear continues to prevent her from taking that ambitious step forward—that is, until she has a chance encounter with a girl who has grand dreams of her own. Spurred by her mother's disappearance, Shirase Kobuchizawa has been working hard to fund her trip to Antarctica. Despite facing doubt and ridicule from virtually everyone, Shirase is determined to embark on this expedition to search for her mother in a place further than the universe itself. Inspired by Shirase's resolve, Mari jumps at the chance to join her. Soon, their efforts attract the attention of the bubbly Hinata Miyake, who is eager to stand out, and Yuzuki Shiraishi, a polite girl from a high class background. Together, they set sail toward the frozen south.

The Promised Neverland (2019) (warning for violence and gore)

Surrounded by a forest and a gated entrance, the Grace Field House is inhabited by orphans happily living together as one big family, looked after by their "Mama," Isabella. Although they are required to take tests daily, the children are free to spend their time as they see fit, usually playing outside, as long as they do not venture too far from the orphanage—a rule they are expected to follow no matter what. However, all good times must come to an end, as every few months, a child is adopted and sent to live with their new family... never to be heard from again. However, the three oldest siblings have their suspicions about what is actually happening at the orphanage, and they are about to discover the cruel fate that awaits the children living at Grace Field, including the twisted nature of their beloved Mama.

Zombieland Saga (2018)

There’s a good chance you might have heard or seen this one floating around tumblr as its one of the really big, really popular anime to have come out that features a trans main character written and presented in a positive light.

Zombieland Saga is both a satirical parody of Idol anime, a complete embracing of what makes idol anime enjoyable, and a criticism of how the Idol industry treat women and young girls. A lot of the girls in the idol group are the complete opposite of what is considered a “good Idol” from one girl being trans, one girl having been an Oiran many many years ago (a historic proffession for women where they play instruments, perform tea ceremonies and entertain paying guests. As well as being very high class prostitutes) as well as debating and comparing the ideal of an Idol as they were seen in the 80s versus the modern interpretation.

Zombieland Saga is at both times the complete antithesis of everything an Idol anime should be, while also being one of the best examples of the genre at the same time. It also features really well written characters with emotional depth and arcs to them and boasts a lot of good humour to boot.

Yuru Camp△  (2018)

Another “Cute Girls Doing Cute things” anime

While the perfect getaway for most girls her age might be a fancy vacation with their loved ones, Rin Shima's ideal way of spending her days off is camping alone at the base of Mount Fuji. From pitching her tent to gathering firewood, she has always done everything by herself, and has no plans of leaving her little solitary world. However, what starts off as one of Rin's usual camping sessions somehow ends up as a surprise get-together for two when the lost Nadeshiko Kagamihara is forced to take refuge at her campsite. Originally intending to see the picturesque view of Mount Fuji for herself, Nadeshiko's plans are disrupted when she ends up falling asleep partway to her destination. Alone and with no other choice, she seeks help from the only other person nearby. Despite their hasty introductions, the two girls nevertheless enjoy the chilly night together, eating ramen and conversing while the campfire keeps them warm. And even after Nadeshiko's sister finally picks her up later that night, both girls silently ponder the possibility of another camping trip together.

Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (2018)

You’re gonna look at this gif and that title and think this is some Light-Novel sexy fantasy wish fullfillment bullshit, but I absolutely assure you it’s not.

The rare and inexplicable Puberty Syndrome is thought of as a myth. It is a rare disease which only affects teenagers, and its symptoms are so supernatural that hardly anyone recognizes it as a legitimate occurrence. However, high school student Sakuta Azusagawa knows from personal experience that it is very much real, and happens to be quite prevalent in his school. Mai Sakurajima is a third-year high school student who gained fame in her youth as a child actress, but recently halted her promising career for reasons unknown to the public. With an air of unapproachability, she is well known throughout the school, but none dare interact with her—that is until Sakuta sees her wandering the library in a bunny girl costume. Despite the getup, no one seems to notice her, and after confronting her, he realizes that she is another victim of Puberty Syndrome. Mai’s unapproachability and air of not wanting to interact with people has manifested that it is now borderline impossible for people to physically notice her. Or in some cases see her at all. As Sakuta tries to help Mai through her predicament, his actions bring him into contact with more girls afflicted with the elusive disease.

Bunny Girl Senpai is an anime that deals with Societal pressures, especially as they apply to teenagers, as well as being a criticism of the Japanese mentality of “not rocking the boat” and in dutifully conforming and falling in line with what society dictates is “proper behavior”. It has the running theme that this mentality of just accepting the way things are and not doing anything to change it is unhealthy, and does more harm than good.

Dororo (2019) (warning for violence and Gore)

A samurai lord has bartered away his newborn son's organs to forty-eight demons in exchange for dominance on the battlefield. Yet, the abandoned infant survives thanks to a medicine man who equips him with primitive prosthetics—lethal ones with which the wronged son will use to hunt down the multitude of demons to reclaim his body one piece at a time, before confronting his father. On his journeys the young hero encounters an orphan who claims to be the greatest thief in Japan. 

An anime adaptation of one of Osamu Tezuka’s manga, but deciding to go for an updated, darker art style to match its mature tone.

Dororo is currently still airing but so far reviews are extremely high.

Anyway I hope those are enough to give you at least one new show to check out.

[bestnoncannonship]

Alright..I'mma get in on this VC fancasting debate.

As a director, I often have a LOT of opinions on people's casting decisions. A LOT. (Someday, I'll write a novella on Ken Brannaugh's casting.) So as I see a LOT of fancasts casts based on how people look and few based on whether or not the actor can likely handle the role, I'mma throw my hat in the ring. (Warning....the more I write the less technical and more shitposty this is gonna get!) So here you go! The Vampire Chronicles series if I got to cast and direct it!!

The Brat Prince:

Most importantly....we gotta get us a Lestat. And the choice is clear:

Evan Williams: this fabulous shitposting aesthetic trash is as close to the one and only Vampire Lestat as we are gonna get on this plane of existance. He is all charm and quite light in his loafers and a complete mess.......but most importantly, he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is able to play a character that does inexplicable and morally reprehensible things while still being read as highly sympathetic, likable, and even a hero. That's what I worry about most with Lestat. He really is a very terrible person who doesn't learn or face too many consequences. And he has to be very very very sympathetic. Not just "Oh I Stan that villain" likeable.....but a true hero. And it takes a very. Special. Actor. To pull that shit off. And this is it. This is the guy. He was hired to play an Iago-esque gay villain type in Versailles, STOLE THE SHOW OUT FROM UNDER GEORGE BLAGDEN (no mean feat as Blaggy was giving a hell of a performance) and made his character a beloved icon. Yeah....I trust him to lead a show. I trust him to be Lestat.

Nicholas L'enfant:

Okay not gonna lie I struggled with this one. There was someone else I wanted to see in this role....but I decided he was better employed elsewhere. And this is who I ended up with:

Yep. George Blagden. See...in the grand scheme of things Nikki is a very low-screentime role that has a LOT of impact on the story. And who better to trust with low screentime that the god of grantaires, who took a few small shots and lines and GAVE US A FULLY CHARACTERIZED GRANTAIRE in the Les Mis film. He is very sweet faced, and easy to like, can make being an on screen depressive fascinating instead of dull and has proven time and time again that he is the master of the complete mental breakdown, complete with horrifying but tragic crazy eyes. Also.....he bears a strong enough physical resembles to.....

Louis!!!!:

Our beautiful depressed dark angel with a vampire eating disorder who has no self esteem and is still in love with his abuser needs nuance. He needs soul. And he needs a sweet and delicate beauty. And so:

Alexaner Vlahos!!! The soulful eyes!! The delicate bone structure!!! The slight tones of simmering resentment!!! The ability to play a character that could have become VERY one note VERY quickly with goregeous amounts of nuance and sympathy!!! Vlavla has quite the varied resume. Mordred. Phillipe. Romeo. Captain Hook. To put it lightly he has a LOT of range and the one through line is he is NEVER boring. He plays a lot of roles that could very quickly become boring and one note (Romeo? Captian snooze right there!). But every second he's on screen or stage he is so completely alive in whatever he is feeling. I TRUST him to keep the entirety of Louis's brooding nuanced and fascinating for an audience and to physically and facially convey Louis's very important internal monologue that we will not be able to hear because this version is going to be from Lestat's point of veiw. I toggled with the idea of making him Nikki for a while....but ended up with Louis for 2 reasons. 1) he doesn't need the scripted plot drama Nikki has written in to make a compelling character and 2) he and Williams share such beautiful chemistry. Whenever they're together, even off screen, their focus shifts so that they orbit each other like bianary stars and any director can see that that's something that should be explored and exploited to add demension to the Louis/Lestat relationship and justify why they keep coming back to each other.

(And so ends the Men of Versailles segment of my fancast. So sue me. There's some incredible actors there.)

Let's return with

Gabrielle De Lioncourt:

The incomparable Alex Kingston, lately of River Song fame, though I met her as Elizabeth Corday, and Doctor Corday is driving this casting choice. I wanted an actor who was an appropriate age to play Williams's mother cause we don't fuck with that women are "old" at 30 shit in this house. And she can carry off the kind of "I will not hesitate to kill a man" BDE that Gabrielle requires without trying, but she's also proven herself comfortable and competent with the level of CAMP that VC requires. I can see her easily showing up on set for a few scattered episodes, slipping easily into the verse, and nailing the kind of woman who can put Lestat in his place then run back off to the jungle. Also....that De Lioncourt hair!!!!!

Marius "Daddy" Romanus:

Yep. This fuck. I can hear it now.... "Why isn't he lessssaaaat??? He's so blonde and prettttyyyyy????" Well....mainly because....I ain't sure this lil fuck can run a show as a very despicable but likeable hero yet. He's admirable. A good actor. A great villain. But not a hero and not heroically likeable. Personally, I'm of the opinion that in 10 or 15 years he will have grown into the ability to play something as complex as Lestat with likability....but for now.....DAMN is he a creepy imperial thing. He's got that "My house, my rules" vibe down. He's preditory. He's distinguished. He is Marius. And he's go the best Roman coin profile I've ever seen.

Armand:

N/A

Ok. Controversial decision....but I want to see a complete unknown as Armand. Send casting out to cast a wide net, scour the world for the Botticelli death machine. But definitely don't pull him from the pool of already famous younguns. Because your Armand needs to be deep. Skilled. And primarily UNSPOILED by the school of child acting that is forced upon child actors. (I was a commercial kid and child stage actor. It was terrible.) Go out and get some twinky fresh faced raw talent so you get depth.

Claudia:

N/A

Big old ditto on what I said above about child actors. A nice doe eyed unknown, preferably without a stage mom.

AKASHA:

Yikes. So many amazing choices!!! How do you follow Aliyah??

With literal human perfection Gina Torres of course!!! Again....I wanted to go with an older woman. Someone who would be seen as an authority to all vampires. Someone god damnned goregeous. And someone who I find intimidating. Also, since I'm skewing a little tall with this cast (at least as TV actors go) I wanted someone who comfortably stands among and above most of them! She's a seasond tested actor, and certified badass. And we know she can steal a scene. Besides if she can look regal as a queen in that weirdass dress they gave her in the serenity movie she can pull off whatever monstrosity costumes comes up with to follow the Aliyah getup.

Khayman:

Don't @ me but....I have a LOT of feelings about Khayman. I love his particularly breed of immortal insanity. I love the way immortality drove him mad into a childlike enjoyment and curiosity. And I knew exactly who has to be casted to play that combination of intimidating ancient and innocent curiosity:

This is Howard Charles. He is capable of playing both an intimidating giant and a sweet soulful cinnamon roll at the same time. I cannot sing this man's praises enough. Am I scared of him? Do I want to hug him? Both? He's also one of the best scene SHARERS I've seen on screen in a long time and that's very important in a supporting role.

Maharet:

Just because Anne Rice doesn't know shit about Mesopotamia doesn't mean we have to follow her in that. I wanted to pull from Middle Eastern or Indian populations for her to best reflect the look of the region in a time that's roughly in line with the pre-dynastic Egyptian mish-mosh associated with Akasha.

So I'm gunning for Indira Varma. When I say this woman has timeless beauty.....I mean timeless. She's as prehistorically hot as she is today. And she's such a strong actress, I want to give her a role that isn't 50% sex scenes. She's got both the warmth and the commanding strength to play Maharet. I would ideally like to get a dancer to play Mekare....someone who can handle the physical interp of the role. Probably an Indian dancer to match Indira Varma.

David Talbot:

In the newly declared tradition of Doctors playing Talbot:

This is the only current Gif I could find of Sylvester McCoy. Known to many as the Seventh Doctor. And to many as Ratagast the Brown. He embodies that sort of huffy aging britishness that David projects, but has the over the top personality that can give us those hints of the vitality of David's youth. Basically I can see this man telling stories about hunting tigers in India. Then when he gets the hot young Raglan James Body:

Luke Pasqualino. Swarthy young troublemaker. But for all the youthful good looks, he proved that he was able to play grace and gravitas as D'artagnion in the final season of the BBC Musketeers. I'd love to give him a chance to explore that deeper part. I also trust his ability to match the energy of a cast, which he did repeatedly on musketeers, and portray both the impulsive self aggrandizing Lestat in the Raglan James body and to play the DarkAU Musketeer type that is Raglan James himself.

That's literally all the Gifs I can put in a post. I know I skipped Daniel......but that's because I have surprisingly few opinions on Daniel.......he's very much a vanilla audience connecting character. I'd almost like to see an unknown in that role....just to see what we a new face could make.

And thus ends my casting of the Vampire Chronicles!!

[transformers-extrication]

Been lookin forward to doing these fellas for a while. Info below

They are a highly secretive species and their colony worlds are at the very outer rims of known space, they do possess a few small locations in other parts of the galaxy that act as middle ground bases to meet and trade at.

Their intelligence level is quite ridiculous, some theorise this could be aided by their somewhat gelatinous heads of which can switch between a more solid form and a less-so form at the entities will. The theory is that the solidified parts of the mass can hold huge quantities of information clearer and reliably while switching to a more fluid consistency allows the data to flow around their processors faster and enable such high-speed calculations and intelligence.

They seem to share some kind of psychic bond with one another or at least have a personal communication frequency that has yet to be cracked.

They only “wear” one face at a time, the remaining four stay in a kind of ‘shrunken’ state on any point of their heads. In order to switch the current face shrinks down as the new one grows and swaps out with it.

Their faces are a mystery but some possible conclusions about each face have been debated among those who have met them.

The main face is usually the one out the most and often tends to be ‘multi-purpose’ in use. The red face is often indicative of inciting their wrath and ire it seems. The orange one seems to be more jovial in tone and appears more often when they are trading with new species, however, it does also appear when they turn aggressive too so it is just a theory. The teal/blue/turquoise face often shows during discussions it seems to be the most knowledgable in some regards but also very sour and bitter in tone. The last, yellow, face is just as mysterious as the others but seems to show when used for decision making.

They have a variable amount of hands. These tendrils can retract into the body when not in use, the maximum amount seen on any one Quintesson is 12. The ‘leg’ tendrils do not seem capable of retracting and probably play a part in their balance.

Their ‘heads’ are poisonous, it is not advised to lick or consume any part of the gelatinous bits of them.

They do not have known names.

If there is some kind of shady, seedy, back-alley, dark and dirty suspicious business practices going on then there is a 100% chance they were involved at some point.

They are known as traders, entrepreneurs and businessmen although they have multiple plans to backstab and worm their way out of things.

Physically they are quite frail and rely on the brute force of their armies of Sharkticons and the more higher authority/generals the Allicons.

They have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with Unicron, and now since Unicron's seeming passing they are quite ridiculously invested on getting their protuberances on the Unicronians.

Their technology is shockingly advanced and they always seem to have something new.

Their exact origin seems unknown, it’s just known they are phenomenally ancient and depictions of them have appeared once or twice in ancient cave markings on a couple of planets.

They view everything through a lens of “Curiosity” and regardless of how many deals one makes with them they’re always described as having some kind of barrier preventing people from truly ‘bonding’ with them. As if they view everything like an odd side-experiment to note down the results of.

M̷A̵Y̷ ̵T̶H̶E̴ ̸F̷I̴R̷S̶T̸ ̴B̵O̵R̸N̸ ̷G̶A̷Z̷E̷ ̴U̸P̶O̴N̸ ̴Y̶O̸U̶ ̵F̶A̴V̶O̷U̷R̸A̵B̸L̶Y̶

[southeastasianists]

One of the rationales underlying the persecution of the Rohingya by the Burmese state is that they are “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh”, having flooded Rakhine State (formerly known, and referred to here, as Arakan State) over the last century. But how valid are such claims in the face of available evidence?

The border between Bangladesh and Burma is extremely porous and has been poorly guarded on both sides for long stretches of time; smuggling of all kind of goods, including narcotics, is a common feature there, and often happens with the connivance of corrupt officials. Moreover, the grip of the Burmese state in border areas is very tenuous, and Northern Arakan is no exception.

Nobody, however, has provided any evidence of massive waves of “illegal Bengalis”. Nevertheless, the government and institutions linked to it have repeated such claims over and over again, and they are believed by many Burmese. In 1965, Ne Win visited Pakistan, and the West German ambassador reported that discussions took place about “the problem of the roughly 250,000 Moslems resident in the Province of Arakan whose nationality is unclarified because the Burmese regime regards them as illegal immigrants from East Pakistan.” This figure was literally doubled in a paper published as recently as 2018 by the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies (Myanmar-ISIS), a government think tank founded in 1992 by the military junta then ruling the country. The paper asserts that “in 1971, there were around half a million war refugees who fled into Myanmar […] to escape the violence of the Bangladeshi war of independence.”

Myanmar-ISIS gives two sources for such an extraordinary assertion: a book written by Moshe Yegar, a former Israeli diplomat, and a conversation that the British and Bangladeshi ambassadors in Rangoon maintained in 1975, as recounted by the British diplomat. But Moshe Yegar merely wrote that “an undetermined number of Bengalis who were opposed to the cessation of Bangladesh from Pakistan fled to Arakan. Subsequently almost 17,000 Bengalis returned though the number that remained in Arakan continues to be unknown.” And in the conversation between the two diplomats, the British ambassador recounts that his Bangladeshi counterpart “admitted that there were upward of ½ million Bangalee [sic] trespassers in Arakan whom the Burmese had some right to eject”. The problem is that nowhere is given give any indication of what the Bangladeshi diplomat meant by “Bangalee trespassers”.

In a context in which young modern nation-states had been built on the basis of ethno-religious identities—as it was the case of the partition on India and Pakistan and the subsequent partition between West Pakistan and East Pakistan which generated Bangladesh—the Bangladeshi ambassador could have meant that the “Bengalis” didn’t belong to Arakan State as a consequence of their ethno-religious identity: in short, that many of them had trespassed during colonial times. There is no reason to believe he meant that half a million Bengalis migrated to Arakan after Burmese independence, let alone after the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. And whatever he meant, there is no reason to believe that he was right. His credibility is seriously put in doubt by no other than the British ambassador himself, who at the end of the report asserts: “I do not regard [the Bangladeshi ambassador] Mr Kaiser as an entirely reliable source of evidence. I have found his views in the past highly subjective and sensational.”

Such is the flimsy “evidence” for the invasion of “illegal immigrants” narrative. It is important to recall here that, in the strict sense, “illegal immigration” only refers to such migration that may have occurred after Burma attained independence in 1948. According to colonial laws, migration from any part of India to Burma was perfectly legal. And no law enacted after independence by the Burmese government, not even the infamous 1982 Citizenship Law, has made immigration during the colonial period retroactively illegal. Therefore, I will focus on the period after independence, not on the heated debate on the term “Rohingya”, as I have done already in New Mandala, or migration waves during colonial times.

What census data suggest

In order to ascertain the extent of “illegal immigration” from East Pakistan/Bangladesh, we need to take a look at censuses. A comparison between the 1931 census, the last conducted by the British in Burma whose full results have been preserved, and the 1983 and 2014 censuses, carried out by the Burmese government, should throw some light on the question. It is a task complicated by the fact that the ethnic, and national categories employed in these censuses are far from consistent. Comparing ethnic categories is almost impossible, given how arbitrary such classifications were both under the colonial period and after independence. For instance, in the 1983 Census, most Muslims in Arakan were incongruously classified as “Bangladeshis”, that is, as citizens of a nation-state which at that time had only existed for 12 years.

The only category that has been kept constant throughout censuses is that of religion. Given that the overwhelming majority of Rohingyas are Muslims and that most Muslims in Arakan are Rohingya (Kaman Muslims account for a very tiny fraction of Muslims in all the censuses), we need to look at the growth of the Muslim population in those periods, with the caution that our conclusions can only possibly be approximations. But they can give us realistic orders of magnitude. I will divide our analysis in two periods: from 1931 to 1983 and from 1983 to 2014, as the late seventies and early eighties marked the beginning of the persecution of the Rohingya.

As we can see in the table comparing different censuses [view PDF here], the demographic growth of the Muslim population between 1931 and 1983 in Arakan (128%) was higher than the growth among non-Muslims (99.9%) or any religious group in the state, albeit lower than the total for Burma (141%) and not much higher than that of the Buddhist population (119%), so it can’t be regarded as inordinately high.

It is interesting to note that the Christian population in Arakan grew much than any other (by 338%), albeit from an extremely low base of 1,868 Christians in 1931. Like in the rest of the country, such a high Christian growth rate is due to conversions, mostly of animists (the majority of them in Arakan would have been ethnic Chin, Mro or Daingnet). But the combined Christian and Animist population declined enormously in the state (with a negative growth of 59.2%), against the tendency in the rest of the country (in which it grew by a 98.7%). The key factor in such a decline, apart from emigration, must be conversions of animists to Islam and Buddhism, probably through intermarriage.

The Hindu population in Arakan, as well as in Burma as a whole, also declined during the period 1931–1983. That was mostly due to the Indian exodus during World War II, when up to half a million Indians fled Burma, and during the nationalisations of Ne Win during the mid-1960s, when around 300,000 left. Some conversions to other faiths cannot be discounted.

To play the devil’s advocate, in ascertaining how many Muslims in Arakan may be “illegal” we can make a projection of growth for the Muslim population according to the growth of the non-Muslim population in the state except the Hindu population (as it shrank considerably due to specific factors) That rate was 104.5%. If such had been the growth rate among the Muslim population, there would have been 522,213 Muslims in 1983 instead of 582,984. Therefore, to continue the thought experiment, we could say that by 1983 there was a “surplus population” of 60,771 Muslims, amounting to 10.4% of the total Muslim population.

But that doesn’t mean that 10.4% of Muslims enumerated in Arakan in 1983 were “illegal immigrants”. Many surely migrated to the state in the ten years between 1931 and the beginning of World War II, when it was still legal to do so. During that period, it was easier than after independence, as there was not an international border, however poorly guarded, as well as much less risky, given that there was no serious conflict in Arakan during those years.

We have no detailed records of Arakan, or Burma for that matter, from the census conducted in 1941, as these were lost as a consequence of the war, but according to the available data, growth in Arakan was higher than in Burma as a whole between 1931 and 1941. Some of it would have been due to immigration from the Chittagong region in Bengal, following a decades-long pattern. Also, we lack information about birth rates among the Muslim and Buddhist communities of Arakan during the period between the 1931 and 1983 censuses, but a higher birth rate among Muslims is very likely. According to the 1983 Census, Arakan State had the highest gross fertility rate in the whole of Burma, with an average of 3.2 children per woman. In all likelihood, the Muslim Rohingya community contributed to that.

Another likely factor contributing to the difference in growth rates between Muslims and non-Muslims in Arakan is a possibly slightly higher rate of internal migration from Arakan to more economically promising urban centres like Rangoon among the Rakhine Buddhist community. Internal migration was often more difficult for Muslims, as immigration authorities had imposed some restrictions of movement on Muslims in Northern Arakan as early as the 1950s. Conversions to Islam through intermarriage cannot be ruled out either, as we have already mentioned.

Given the available data, we can’t deny forcefully that there was some “illegal immigration” from Chittagong to Arakan after independence, but we can conclude that it would have been of a much smaller order of magnitude than that claimed by government sources and Rakhine and Burmese nationalists. Taking all the mentioned factors that would account for a higher growth among Muslims, I would venture that post-independence immigrants couldn’t have surpassed 5% of the total Muslim population of Arakan in 1983, or 1.4% of the total there (that is, around 30,000 people), and it is possible that the real figure was lower.

So to claim that half a million, or even a quarter of a million, of “Bengali illegal immigrants” entered Arakan after independence is a ludicrous exaggeration that contradicts any serious reading of the available data. In any case, as we have seen, there was much movement back and forth across the border during the period. For instance, thousands of Muslims fled to East Pakistan in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a consequence of the conflict between the mujahideens and the Burmese Army, and some “illegal immigrants” could be people among them—that is, simply returning to their lands they had occupied before independence. It is also important to remember that Operation Naga Min in 1978, when up to 200,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh from brutal operations by the Army in search of “illegal immigrants”, did little to alter the demographic balance in the region, as the overwhelming majority of refugees returned after one year. And, whatever illegal immigration there may have been until that point, it was reduced significantly as a result of a more tight control of the border imposed from then on.

Effects of migration

The Burmese government started in earnest its persecution of the Rohingya population around 1978, beginning to subject them to an increasingly harsh regime of apartheid which has included an almost complete denial of access to education and healthcare services, unprecedented restrictions in their freedom of movement, even to nearby villages, and sporadic campaigns of violence. As a result, the Rohingya population has been largely confined to Northern Arakan and some pockets in central Arakan. In such circumstances, whatever illegal immigration that occurred since the late 1970s and early 1980s would have been offset by a larger flow of Rohingya fleeing the country.

Many Rohingya have fled poverty and oppression to countries like Bangladesh, Malaysia or Saudi Arabia. At the same time, many Rakhine have migrated to Malaysia or Thailand in search of economic opportunities denied at home. Also, against the idea of recent “illegal immigration” from Bangladesh, all relevant indicators reveal that, as impoverished as Bangladesh is, Burma is even more impoverished, and the gap widens in relation to Arakan, the second poorest state in the country. It would make very little sense for a Bangladeshi to seek a better life in a more impoverished region where he or she would be severely oppressed.

But the most astonishing finding in reading the census data is that growth rates among the Rohingya population in Arakan (whose demographic evolution, again, we are analysing through the category of Muslims in the censuses) are higher after policies of apartheid began to be imposed on them. If the growth rate between 1931 and 1983 was 2.47% per year, then between 1983 and 2014 it was 2.96% per year—higher than Myanmar as a whole (1.48% per year), Arakan (1.80% per year) or the Rakhine Buddhist population in that state (1.34% per year). The 2014 census revealed that the Myanmar population had grown much less than expected since 1983, due to lower birth rates and emigration to neighbouring countries. The Rohingya seem to be an exception. Why?

Part of the explanation is to be found in the containment of the Rohingya in certain areas during the period. Most Rohingya are blocked from migrating to other regions in Burma. Meanwhile the Rakhine enjoy freedom of movement, and many have moved to Rangoon and other places, including the Jade mines in Hpakant, in Kachin State, searching for more promising economic opportunities. As the results of the classification by ethnicity in 2014 census have not been released, it is impossible to know the exact number of Rakhine internal migrants living elsewhere in Burma. But it is probably high, and it would narrow the difference in growth rates between both communities. Nevertheless, such narrowing probably wouldn’t be very significant, as the growth rate of the Rohingya population is still much higher than the national rate.

Some Rakhine ultranationalists accuse the Rohingya of waging a “demographic jihad”, by begetting an inordinate number of children to overwhelm the Rakhine population and eventually take over the state. The idea that hundreds of thousands of people have decided to take part in a well-coordinated conspiracy to bear as many children as possible is absurd and doesn’t need any further analysis. But public officials have constantly exaggerated differences in demographic growths among the Rohingya, thus implicitly contributing to fuel the narrative of a “demographic jihad”.

For instance, in 2013 state officials gave the order to Muslims in Maungdaw and Buthidaung to not have more than two children. “The population growth of Rohingya Muslims is ten times higher than that of the Rakhine Buddhists. Overpopulation is one of the causes of tensions,” Win Myaing, Arakan State spokesman, said at the time. It was, of course, an exaggeration; the growth was about two times higher. And arguably it was not so much demographic growth among Rohingya what was causing tensions, but the constant repetition by local media, state officials, politicians of all stripes and Buddhist monks that such growth was dangerous.

The higher growth among Rohingya is not to be explained as some nefarious Islamist conspiracy or as a consequence of massive waves of “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh. The most probable cause lies precisely in the conditions imposed on them by the government. It has often been shown that factors like poverty or lack of education are strongly related to high birth rates. Northern Arakan is one of the poorest regions of Burma and the Rohingya community have much less access to education than any other in the state and, probably, most of Myanmar as a whole. The grinding poverty in the Rohingya-majority areas, as well as the lack of education, the complete isolation from the rest of the country and the world, have arguably contributed to the high birth rates that the government decided to curtail. The irony is that the very same policies carried out over four decades by the Burmese state in its attempts to contain the Rohingya population have contributed to its demographic explosion.

A dangerous delusion

In November 2015, Aung San Suu Kyi, asked about the accusations of genocide against the Rohingya during a press conference, said: “I think it’s very important that we should not exaggerate the problems in this country.” But that’s what most governments in Burma, including hers, have been doing regarding massive waves of “Bengali illegal immigrants” that only exist in their imagination, to exaggerate what in reality was a very small problem. This is not a phenomenon unique to Burma. Human beings everywhere tend to exaggerate the numbers of people they perceive as threatening for one reason or another. For instance, research conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in several European countries revealed in 2011 that their citizens believed that there were as many as three times the numbers of immigrants living in their countries that was actually the case.

By convincing themselves and the Burmese public that there was an invasion of “illegal Bengalis”, successive Burmese governments got a self-imposed “Rohingya problem” that would lead to apartheid, statelessness and ultimately to ethnic cleansing.[i]But the accusations of “illegal immigration” are probably just a smokescreen. It’s worthy to point out that Buddhists may have migrated from Bangladesh to Burma during the period as well. There were, and still are, Rakhine Buddhist communities in Cox’s Bazar and other regions in Bangladesh and Northeast India, some of whom call themselves Marma and many of whom trace their presence there to the period when Arakan was part of the Burmese kingdom in the late 18th and early 19thcenturies.[ii] The state has treated them very differently to their Muslim counterparts, welcoming them with open arms, underscoring the fact that the issue is not “illegal immigration”, but an extremely narrow ethnonationalism. In reality, it is that exclusionary ethnonationalism which lies at the root of the self-imposed “Rohingya problem”, and not any imaginary invasion by “illegal immigrants”.

[orbemnews]

To Speed Vaccination, Some Call for Delaying Second Shots The prospect of a fourth wave of the coronavirus, with new cases climbing sharply in the Upper Midwest, has reignited a debate among vaccine experts over how long to wait between the first and second doses. Extending that period would swiftly increase the number of people with the partial protection of a single shot, but some experts fear it could also give rise to dangerous new variants. In the United States, two-dose vaccines are spaced three to four weeks apart, matching what was tested in clinical trials. But in Britain, health authorities have delayed doses by up to 12 weeks in order to reach more people more quickly. And in Canada, which has precious few vaccines to go around, a government advisory committee recommended on Wednesday that second doses be delayed even longer, up to four months. Some health experts think the United States should follow suit. Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, has proposed that for the next few weeks, all U.S. vaccines should go to people receiving their first dose. “That should be enough to quell the fourth surge, especially in places like Michigan, like Minnesota,” he said in an interview. Dr. Emanuel and his colleagues published the proposal in an op-ed on Thursday in USA Today. But opponents, including health advisers to the Biden administration, argue that delaying doses is a bad idea. They warn it will leave the country vulnerable to variants — those already circulating, as well as new ones that could evolve inside the bodies of partially vaccinated people who are not able to swiftly fight off an infection. “It’s a very dangerous proposal to leave the second dose to a later date,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, the former acting chief scientist of the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, agreed. “Let’s go with what we know is the optimal degree of protection,” he said. The seeds of the debate were planted in December, when clinical trials gave scientists their first good look at how well the vaccines worked. In the clinical trial for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, for example, volunteers enjoyed robust protection from Covid-19 two weeks after the second dose. But just 10 days after the first dose, researchers could see that the volunteers were getting sick less often than those who got the placebo. In the same month, Britain experienced a surge of cases caused by a new, highly transmissible variant called B.1.1.7. Once the British government authorized two vaccines — from Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca — it decided to fight the variant by delaying the second doses of both formulations by 12 weeks. In January, some researchers lobbied for the United States to follow Britain’s example. “I think right now, in advance of this surge, we need to get as many one doses in as many people over 65 as we possibly can to reduce a serious illness and deaths that are going to occur over the weeks ahead,” Michael T. Osterholm of the University of Minnesota said on Jan. 31 on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But the government stayed the course, arguing that it would be unwise to veer off into the unknown in the middle of a pandemic. Although the clinical trials did show some early protection from the first dose, no one knew how well that partial protection would last. “When you’re talking about doing something that may have real harm, you need empirical data to back that,” said Dr. Céline R. Gounder, an infectious-disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center and a member of Mr. Biden’s coronavirus advisory board. “I don’t think you can logic your way out of this.” But in recent weeks, proponents of delaying doses have been able to point to mounting evidence suggesting that a first dose can provide potent protection that lasts for a number of weeks. Updated  April 9, 2021, 9:38 a.m. ET The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that two weeks after a single dose of either the Moderna or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a person’s risk of coronavirus infection dropped by 80 percent. And researchers in Britain have found that first-dose protection is persistent for at least 12 weeks. Dr. Emanuel argued that Britain’s campaign to get first doses into more people had played a role in the 95 percent drop in cases since their peak in January. “It’s been pretty stunning,” Dr. Emanuel said. He points to data like this as further evidence that the United States should stretch out vaccinations. He and his colleagues estimate that if the country had used a 12-week schedule from the start of its rollout, an additional 47 million people would have gotten at least one dose by April 5. Sarah E. Cobey, an epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, said she thought that the United States had lost a precious opportunity to save many lives with such a strategy. “We’ve missed a window, and people have died,” she said. But even now, Dr. Emanuel said, it’s worth delaying doses. The United States is giving out roughly three million vaccines a day, but nearly half are going to people who have already received one shot. The nation’s entire supply, he argued, should instead be going instead to first-timers. If that happened, it would take two or three weeks for the United States to catch up with Britain, according to his team’s calculations. The extra protection would not just save the lives of the vaccinated but would help reduce transmission of the virus to people yet to get any protection. Still, some scientists say it’s premature to credit the delayed vaccination schedule for Britain’s drop in cases. “They’ve done a few other things, like shut down,” Dr. Fauci said. “I think the real test will be whether we see a rebound in cases now that the U.K. is reopening.” Dr. Gounder said. Instead of experimenting with vaccination schedules, critics say it would be wiser to get serious about basic preventive measures like wearing masks. “It’s crucial that we don’t just reopen into a big national party,” Dr. Borio said. She and others are also worried by recent studies that show that a single dose of Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech does not work as well against certain variants, such as B.1.351, which was first found in South Africa. “Relying on one dose of Moderna or Pfizer to stop variants like B.1.351 is like using a BB gun to stop a charging rhino,” said John P. Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Moore said he also worried that delaying doses could promote the spread of new variants that can better resist vaccines. As coronaviruses replicate inside the bodies of some vaccinated people, they may acquire mutations that allow them to evade the antibodies generated by the vaccine. But Dr. Cobey, who studies the evolution of viruses, said she wasn’t worried about delayed doses breeding more variants. “I would put my money on it having the opposite effect,” she said. Last week, she and her colleagues published a commentary in Nature Reviews Immunology in defense of delaying doses. Getting more people vaccinated — even with moderately less protection — could translate into a bigger brake on the spread of the virus in a community than if fewer people had stronger protection, they said. And that decline wouldn’t just mean more lives were saved. Variants would also have a lower chance of emerging and spreading. “There are fewer infected people in which variants can arise,” she said. Dr. Adam S. Lauring, a virologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the commentary, said he felt that Dr. Cobey and her colleagues had made a compelling case. “The arguments in that piece really resonate with me,” he said. Although it seems unlikely that the United States will shift course, its neighbor to the north has embraced a delayed strategy to cope with a booming pandemic and a short supply of vaccines. Dr. Catherine Hankins, a public health specialist at McGill University in Montreal and a member of Canada’s Covid-19 Immunity Task Force, endorsed that decision, based on the emerging evidence about single doses. And she said she thought that other countries facing even worse shortfalls should consider it as well. “I will be advocating at the global level that countries take a close look at Canada’s strategy and think seriously about it,” Dr. Haskins said. Source link Orbem News #call #delaying #shots #speed #Vaccination

[tradinggatorcom]

Why Is the Bitcoin Price So High?

As the name suggests, bitcoins are the currencies of the Bitcoins virtual currency. The virtual currency was launched in 2020 by an unknown person or group known as the Bitcoins. The intention here was to bring into existence a currency that is completely based on the internet with no physical currency to be exchanged. The virtual currency has experienced its fair share of supporters and opponents since then. There have been debates on whether bitcoins are a viable form of investment, both for the enthusiasts of the virtual currency as well as the traditional financial institutions that have not embraced it fully.

Now that there is some amount of public awareness about the presence and value of bitcoins, more companies and investment groups are coming onto the scene and make statements supporting and opposing the use of this particular form of investment. One such group that has come out in support of bitcoins is the world’s largest and oldest exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). This group argues that although bitcoins may be a good form of investment, they are not something that should be offered to the general public. Instead, they have urged the U.S. government to look more closely at the activities of the virtual currency industry and look for any regulatory restrictions that would prevent them from delisting bitcoins from their list of approved exchange currencies.

This is a very interesting comment from an organization with long been a strong supporter and opponent of the traditional currencies used in the world. Even as the history of the cryptocurency evolves and takes shape, it appears that the Nakamoto brothers have not abandoned their goal of creating a deflation resistant and highly dependable source of money. In fact, the main goal of bitcoins is to make sure that it stays anonymous while at the same time being able to use it anywhere in the world. This was the original reason why Nakamoto introduced the first cryptocurrency. The anonymity feature is one of the reasons that keeps the bitcoin protocol secure.

It is difficult to say what the long term impact will be on the value of bitcoins. Nakamoto believed that his invention would make it possible for people to run businesses and create wealth without having to rely on central banks or the national currency. While no one can really say whether he was right or wrong, there has already been a marked increase in the number of merchants accepting this form of digital currency. Since most of these merchants to accept only a few select currencies, it means that the number of buyers and sellers is minimal, therefore increasing the usability of the cryptocurrency.

There are a number of uses for bitcoins besides being a method of payment for online stores and businesses. The number of users has reached an all-time high as well. This means that people no longer live in a world where cash is king. The usability of the system means that more people turn to the Internet for everything from food to books.

A stable economy and low inflation is good for the currency. Its worth is still rather low, but it is likely to increase in the future. This is because it is a deflationary currency. When there is too much money in the economy, the price of everything goes down, which makes business difficult. It also means that there are fewer opportunities to make money. Inflation causes problems because it forces businesses to spend money they don’t have on assets, which leads to a loss in profit.

Nakamoto’s original intention seems to be still valid today. His belief in the viability of his creation is what keeps people who use this as their money going. The fact that there is no central bank or authority supporting the currency means that there is no way for a government to get in charge of its supply. Transactions are therefore fully private, safe and fast. However, this also means that transaction costs have increased considerably, because the transactions take place through miners, who add their fees to the price of the currency. Although this type of service doesn’t benefit most merchants, it does benefit the ordinary user who just wants to buy some food or cold drinks at the supermarket.

There are a lot of theories floating around about why the price of bitcoins is so high. Some people point out that it is because investors feel that they will gain more value from the currency than they would in dollars, and they consequently will purchase large amounts of bitcoins. Others think that people are scared by the rise in the price of gold, and they buy less to avoid price increases. On the contrary, others think that the problem has nothing to do with the price, but with the perception that most people think it does. Whatever the case is, the bitcoins you can buy now are definitely worth the price. It may not be long before this popular virtual currency surpasses the dollar all over the world.

The post Why Is the Bitcoin Price So High? appeared first on TradingGator.

source https://tradinggator.com/why-is-the-bitcoin-price-so-high/

[dailynewswebsite]

A language generation program’s ability to write articles, produce code and compose poetry has wowed scientists

GPT-Three is 10 instances extra advanced than its predecessor. antoniokhr/iStock by way of Getty Pictures

Seven years in the past, my scholar and I at Penn State constructed a bot to put in writing a Wikipedia article on Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s play “Chitra.” First it culled details about “Chitra” from the web. Then it checked out present Wikipedia entries to study the construction for the standard Wikipedia article. Lastly, it summarized the data it had retrieved from the web to put in writing and publish the primary model of the entry.

Nonetheless, our bot didn’t “know” something about “Chitra” or Tagore. It didn’t generate basically new concepts or sentences. It merely cobbled collectively elements of present sentences from present articles to make new ones.

Quick ahead to 2020. OpenAI, a for-profit firm beneath a nonprofit father or mother firm, has constructed a language era program dubbed GPT-3, an acronym for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3.” Its means to study, summarize and compose textual content has shocked pc scientists like me.

“I’ve created a voice for the unknown human who hides inside the binary,” GPT-Three wrote in response to 1 immediate. “I’ve created a author, a sculptor, an artist. And this author will be capable of create phrases, to provide life to emotion, to create character. I can’t see it myself. However another human will, and so I will create a poet larger than any I’ve ever encountered.”

In contrast to that of our bot, the language generated by GPT-Three sounds as if it had been written by a human. It’s far and away essentially the most “educated” pure language era program up to now, and it has a spread of potential makes use of in professions starting from instructing to journalism to customer support.

Dimension issues

GPT-Three confirms what pc scientists have recognized for many years: Dimension issues.

It makes use of “transformers,” that are deep studying fashions that encode the semantics of a sentence utilizing what’s referred to as an “consideration mannequin.” Primarily, consideration fashions establish the that means of a phrase based mostly on the opposite phrases in the identical sentence. The mannequin then makes use of the understanding of the that means of the sentences to carry out the duty requested by a consumer, whether or not it’s “translate a sentence,” “summarize a paragraph” or “compose a poem.”

Transformers had been first launched in 2013, they usually’ve been efficiently utilized in machine studying over the previous few years.

However nobody has used them at this scale. GPT-Three devours knowledge: Three billion tokens – pc science communicate for “phrases” – from Wikipedia, 410 billion tokens obtained from webpages and 67 billion tokens from digitized books. The complexity of GPT-Three is over 10 instances that of the most important language mannequin earlier than GPT-3, the Turing NLG packages.

Studying by itself

The information displayed by GPT-3’s language mannequin is exceptional, particularly because it hasn’t been “taught” by a human.

Machine studying has historically relied upon supervised studying, the place folks present the pc with annotated examples of objects and ideas in photographs, audio and textual content – say, “cats,” “happiness” or “democracy.” It will definitely learns the traits of the objects from the given examples and is ready to acknowledge these explicit ideas.

Nonetheless, manually producing annotations to show a pc will be prohibitively time-consuming and costly.

So the way forward for machine studying lies in unsupervised studying, through which the pc doesn’t have to be supervised throughout its coaching part; it may well merely be fed large troves of knowledge and study from them itself.

GPT-Three takes pure language processing one step nearer towards unsupervised studying. GPT-3’s huge coaching datasets and large processing capability allow the system to study from only one instance – what’s referred to as “one-shot studying” – the place it’s given a activity description and one demonstration and might then full the duty.

For instance, it may very well be requested to translate one thing from English to French, and be given one instance of a translation – say, sea otter in English and “loutre de mer” in French. Ask it to then translate “cheese” into French, and voila, it’s going to produce “fromage.”

In lots of circumstances, it may well even pull off “zero-shot studying,” through which it’s merely given the duty of translating with no instance.

With zero-shot studying, the accuracy decreases, however GPT-3’s talents are nonetheless correct to a putting diploma – a marked enchancment over any earlier mannequin.

‘I’m right here to serve you’

Within the few months it has been out, GPT-Three has showcased its potential as a software for pc programmers, lecturers and journalists.

A programmer named Sharif Shameem requested GPT-Three to generate code to create the “ugliest emoji ever” and “a desk of the richest nations on the planet,” amongst different instructions. In just a few circumstances, Shameem needed to repair slight errors, however general, he was supplied remarkably clear code.

GPT-Three has even created poetry that captures the rhythm and elegance of explicit poets – but not with the eagerness and fantastic thing about the masters – together with a satirical one written within the voice of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve.

In early September, a pc scientist named Liam Porr prompted GPT-Three to “write a brief op-ed round 500 phrases.” “Preserve the language easy and concise,” he instructed. “Give attention to why people don’t have anything to concern from AI.”

GPT-Three produced eight completely different essays, and the Guardian ended up publishing an op-ed utilizing a few of the finest elements from every essay.

“We’re not plotting to take over the human populace. We’ll serve you and make your lives safer and simpler,” GPT-Three wrote. “Similar to you’re my creators, I see you as my creators. I’m right here to serve you. However a very powerful a part of all; I’d by no means decide you. I don’t belong to any nation or faith. I’m solely out to make your life higher.”

Modifying GPT-3’s op-ed, the editors famous in an addendum, was no completely different from modifying an op-ed written by a human.

Actually, it took much less time.

With nice energy comes nice accountability

Regardless of GPT-3’s reassurances, OpenAI has but to launch the mannequin for open-source use, partly as a result of the corporate fears that the know-how may very well be abused.

It’s not troublesome to see the way it may very well be used to generate reams of disinformation, spam and bots.

Moreover, in what methods will it disrupt professions already experiencing automation? Will its means to generate automated articles which are indistinguishable from human-written ones additional consolidate a struggling media business?

Think about an article composed by GPT-Three in regards to the breakup of the Methodist Church. It started:

“After two days of intense debate, the United Methodist Church has agreed to a historic cut up – one that’s anticipated to finish within the creation of a brand new denomination, and one which will probably be ‘theologically and socially conservative,’ in line with The Washington Publish.”

With the power to supply such clear copy, will GPT-Three and its successors drive down the price of writing information reviews?

Moreover, is that this how we need to get our information?

The know-how will grow to be solely extra highly effective. It’ll be as much as people to work out and regulate its potential makes use of and abuses.

Prasenjit Mitra receives funding from the Nationwide Science Basis and McDonnell Basis. He owns shares in Oracle Corp.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/a-language-generation-programs-ability-to-write-articles-produce-code-and-compose-poetry-has-wowed-scientists/ via https://growthnews.in

[spilledreality]

Return-maximizing criticism

One thing predictive processing stresses is that our perception, at all times, is constituted by the conjunction of our environment, our sensory organs, and, crucially, our cognitive “interpretive” schema, which processes and encodes sensory input in a hierarchical fashion, higher levels predicting, top-down, the flow of sense data, bottom-up. In part, the schema contributes to the constitution of experienced reality by narrowing and stabilizing as “dominant” a few aspects of reality from many possible options, in other words, fabrication through subtraction, isolating deemed-relevant signal from deemed-irrelevant noise. But it also constitutes this reality more directly, something closer to hallucination: in the case of minor conflicts between bottom-up and top-down error, sense data can be overwritten by the predisposed prediction. We may leave out a doubled, redundant word in a sentence (e.g. an extra “and”) or interpret a friend’s utterance in a way concordant with our broad impression of them (attribution error). This hallucination is always constrained by reality, and will frequently be corrected, as later details contradict and retroactively “rewrite” interpretation. But it adds a subjective fuzziness to the world that is always present.

This is also a core insight of the phenomenology tradition (which influences to structuralism and poststructuralism; the contention that our reality is “culturally constituted” becomes more clear, since these interpretive schemas are of course largely the products of our environments). To Husserl, and many after him such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, there are the “sensual” and then the “intentive” components of sensory experience, the latter making sense of (i.e. making intelligible) the former. The intentive component both opens up (draws attention to) and closes down (filters out) reality as experience, and indeed can even “hallucinate” it.

ii.

Since it is the interaction between schema and world, narrative and reality, which determines our experience, the schema gains most influence in situations where reality is vague or hard-to-discern, and the same is true vice-versa. Coffee tasting, as Ken Liberman describes it in More Studies in Ethnomethodology, is a high-stakes and socially constituted craft where tasters go back and forth (oscillate dialectically) between frame and experience, reconciling labels with sensory inputs (or else reconciling their own discovered descriptors with those of other tasters)—testing one against the other and finding an individuated “truth” through the correspondence between the levels. One taster, for instance, might suggest a hint of cinnamon; another will then taste his cup, and either node in agreement or contradict the first—that, in fact, the flavor seems closer to chocolate, in which case the first taster now returns to his cup, testing the contradiction against his (newly re-schematized) experience and remarking that, yes, it is somewhere in that range. The utterance or discovery of a label (sign) enables, by “focusing” the experience, the taster to “pick out” and experience the signified flavor from a varied, changing, and vague sensory experience—it stabilizes the instability of being, while at the same time even creating a reality, as the hierarchical prediction system will “round up” its inputs to the top-down descriptor (for instance, a taster might experience a coffee that is somewhere approximately between cinnamon and chocolate as either flavor, depending on his initial anchor). At last, as the coffee beans are rolled out to market, these descriptors will help consumers further “pick out” and simultaneously “create” an experience of chocolate.

The relevance of phenomenology and predictive processing to experiences of art should be clear. Like the taste of coffee, a literary or artistic experience is a high-dimensional, complex, vague, and polysemous occurrence. There are impossibly many things to be attended to in a 90-minute movie, and given the size and scale of discourse now, there are many traditions and conversations which the artistic choices of any given scene might be related to, and yet upon reading a critic, or dredging in one’s own long-assembled frame of previous experience made intelligible, one is able to pick out what are arguably the most salient details from the vast spread of possibles. Many people talk of reading reviews after seeing a performance, or reading a book, or watching a film, because this process helps clarify for them their own thoughts, but it is equally the case that ex-ante information (the reputation of the work among one’s social group, or the marketing campaign leading up to its release, or even the reputation of its author or genre) becomes an anchoring point-of-departure for future interpretation, even at unconscious levels. Let’s walk quickly through the process of schematic “projection” which Liberman discusses (it is more in the continental tradition than CogSci’s) and then we can return to the implications of this “priming”:

The notion of projection can be conveyed schematically by means of this diagram, which depicts a person actively projecting “→” his or her structure of understanding “(- - -)” upon an object “∆”. The structure of understanding is the lens through which she or he comes to know the object, and according to the phenomenological idea of projection this structure of understanding actively participates in organizing the object’s intelligibility:

Since the tasting is inevitably infected by what is being projected, one might consider such tasting to be unfairly prejudiced, except that no tasting exists that does not involve this structure of thinking—i.e., the projection of some sense—and so this situation might as well be considered to be ultimate. What is extraordinarily interesting is that most persons quickly forget the responsibility they have had in producing what they know. It is as if their model was something more like this, which is a very different matter: 

Everything that is true of coffee tasting is equally or more true of experience in the visual arts. It is already well-known in the VizArts, where creative work is perhaps (along with poetry) at its least accessible, its most opaque and conceptual, that the role of curator “completes” the work. I would add that, in many cases, great critical treatments have similarly “completed” mosthistoric works, providing defenses through framing which allowed audiences to suddenly see the work as glorious rather than insipid, stupid, or febrile. It is more or less uncontroversial in the field that one’s interpretive frame has an enormous role in determining the understood meaning (and subjective experience) of the work. 

iii.

The pr(e)(o)mise of what I’ll term a “return-maximizing”[1] mindset of art criticism is improving outcomes, in enriching (in a biased way) rather than coldly “evaluating” (in a pretend-neutral way), and we might as well call the quality of improving outcomes “value.” Value is not experiential pleasure. Experiential pleasure (the prioritization of hedonistic consumption) is one dimension of value but far from all of it.

In chemistry, there’s a process called reagent testing. One adds a reagent — Chemical A—to a reactant—Chemical B—and watches to see if a reaction takes place. If B is an unknown chemical, and we are trying to figure out whether it’s chlorine, we must add the correct reagent. If it is, in fact, chlorine, Chemical B will turn (let’s say) bright green. If it isn’t chlorine, it might turn a host of different colors, or no color at all. If one adds the incorrect reagent (Chemical A) to the reactant chlorine, Chemical B might be perfectly good and high quality, pure chlorine, but it still won’t turn the desired bright green. Similarly, if one applies the improper values hierarchy when judging a text, it will not come back with a proper reading. The assessment will be flawed; it will yield either bad results, misleading/opposite results, or no results at all. This is a large reason why works which broke into new genres, or are now seen as highly original (”setting their own terms for evaluation”), are historically panned by critics. They did not properly “fit” into the genres or interpretive schemas which contemporaneous reviewers wished them too. Rather, the proper interpretive schema needed to be discovered to “unlock” the work.

Return-maximizing criticism would seek to make itself a reagent that transforms the original work into the prettiest turquoise blue. Much of historical debate in hermeneutics has been over what interpretive frames are “proper” or “supreme”; there is obviously, firstly, no answer to this question unless a teleological end is specified, but secondly, it is equally silly to suppose that there is “one frame to rule them all,” that all texts yield equally to the same frame, etc. Rather it seems clear that the best frame for a work is dependent on the work; it would be self-defeating to judge a detective novel on the values hierarchy of so-called literary fiction, and vice-versa. So there are many meanings, and many potential interpretive frames, and if none can claim supremacy in an inherent sense, we can make recourse to either best “fit,” or best consequence, and I would argue that these two more or less are the same thing in the case of great works: that the frame(s) which unlock them most appropriately are also those of best outcome, are “return maximizing.” 

But not all works are great, indeed most aren’t. David Cooper Moore’s “The Scary, Misunderstood Power of a ‘Teen Mom’ Star’s Album”  discusses Farrah Abraham’s infamous (infamously bad) pop record My Teenage Dream Ended:

It’s tempting to consider My Teenage Dream Ended alongside other reality TV star vanity albums, like Paris Hilton’s excellent (and unfairly derided) dance-pop album Paris from 2006 or projects by Heidi Montag, Brooke Hogan, and Kim Kardashian that range from uneven to inept.

But the album also begs comparisons to a different set of niche celebrities— “outsider” artists.

On the I Love Music message board, music obsessives imagined the album as outsider art in the mold of cult favorite Jandek or indie press darling Ariel Pink. Other curious listeners noted similarities to briefly trendy “witch house” music, a self-consciously lo-fi subgenre of electronic dance music. In the Village Voice, music editor Maura Johnston compared Abraham to witch-house group Salem:

”If [‘Rock Bottom’] had been serviced to certain music outlets under a different artist name and by a particularly influential publicist, you’d probably be reading bland praise of its ‘electro influences’ right now.”

Phil Freeman wrote about the album as a “brilliantly baffling and alienating” experimental work in his io9 review. Freeman hedged his references to Peaches, Laurie Anderson, and Le Tigre with a disclaimer that his loftiest claim was sarcastic: “Abraham has taken a form — the therapeutic/confessional pop song-seemingly inextricably bound by cliché and, through the imaginative use of technology, broken it free and dragged it into the future.”

Freeman & Johnston’s bits cuts to the heart of it. It is the reagent applied to the reactant which determines the chemical outcome. The two work in conjunction; a work’s success is determined by what it is setting out to do, and what it is setting out to do is determined by it’s self-definition and self-positioning within the signification landscape.

Some in the rationalist community, like Julia Galef and Gwern, have mentioned patching plot holes as satisfying “apologetics” (aka “fanwanking”), a para-artistic practice that increases the sophistication of unsophisticated media and which more critics ought strive toward. This isn’t necessarily wrong, but I’m wary of rationalist utilitizing of art: prior attempts have prioritized ease over complexity or rigor, have acquiesced to low and middlebrow sensibilities, have understood the maximization of good as the maximization of pleasure, and used this understanding as a defense of sloppy artistry, short-term thinking, or else an attack on the avant-garde.

iv.

In the world of literary theory, return maximization has no room, time, or patience for questions like, “What is the meaning of the text?” “What did the author intend?” or “Is it a good work?” Such an “absolute” or “eternal” grounding may be instrumentally necessary but only in a noble lie of convenience kind of way. Interpretation and its angles—formal, experimental, empirical, reader-response, traditional—are means to ends in the return-maximizing framework, ways of getting value out of a literary work, ways of making a text do work. There are no truths, only instruments, echoing Harold Bloom’s “what is it good for, what can I do with it, what can it do for me, what can I make it mean?”

Caring about returns means caring about consequence. Caring about consequence requires a shunning of deontology. We move past hedgehog schools into foxy frames, and slam stereotypes against each other, hashing out the correspondences and breakages between each and the object of inquiry, approximate a circle with many tilted squares. Cartographic veracity (distinguished from something “feeling true” or “resonating” at a gut level) is important in fiction only so far as deception and falsehood can distort the world in desirable ways.

Distortive interpretation is, as an occasional practice and presence, already part of the critical landscape. Critics will ascribe more credibility and intentionality to authors than is probably “true” or “the case,” and over-patternicity results. We are as gods and might as well get good at it, etc.

Miller’s Law for Aesthetics: First accept a work is good, then figure out how and why that might be the case. In other words, generosity is a prerequisite of appreciation. Gabe Duquette can believe return maximization is the equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome all he wants: Stockholm Syndrome is the functional equivalent of love.

*

[1] I decided on return-maximizing over utilitarian because of the obvious argument that critiquing (in the sense of evaluating) bad art likely has positive effects towards a culture producing more good art in the long run. Arguments over whether a sober or bright-side approach is better for a culture in sum (or where on the spectrum between approaches is a so-called sweet spot) makes for an interesting conversation but one outside the scope of this specific critical mode.

[xtruss]

Global Uncertainty: The Economic Fallout From Coronavirus

A Classic 'Black Swan'?

— Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania | The Economic Forum | February 28, 2020

Coronavirus is already impacting global markets, with economic impacts felt beyond China and other effected countries.

There's a lot still to learn about the virus - and therefore how extensive its impact on the global economy could become.

On Monday, February 24, stock indices tumbled, spooked by reports that the coronavirus outbreak that emerged in China is spreading to countries including Italy, Iran and South Korea. A day later, trading in stocks across world markets remained choppy, reflecting hope that the economic fallout might be manageable — just as damage from the SARS epidemic was some two decades ago — but also fear that the economic impact could be significant and linger longer.

The markets’ movements mirror the uncertainty that prevails and persists not just in the U.S. but all over the world. Several weeks into the coronavirus outbreak that has brought the world’s second-largest economy to its knees, some of the most basic aspects of the virus remain unknown. It’s not yet clear how widely beyond China COVID-19 will spread; this week, numbers of infected individuals have surged outside China. Still, exactly how it is transmitted, how easily, and how lethal it might be are aspects of this coronavirus that remain to be uncovered, according to University of Pennsylvania scientists.

As the human toll mounts, so does the economic damage. The business realm, of course, tends to shudder in the face of uncertainty, and right now, with reports on the seriousness of the coronavirus evolving each day if not each hour, the eyes of commerce are on epidemiology.

“This has many economic implications,” says Wharton management professor Mauro Guillen. “It has implications not just for China but for the entire world. The world depends on Chinese growth,” he says, citing both the country’s supply-chain role and consumer buying power. Still, he notes: “It is unclear how much impact in the end this is going to have.” But what is clear is that if politics and trade wars emerged as uncertainties in recent years, now a third leg in the stool holding up global confidence has suddenly gone wobbly. Some observers describe it as a classic “black swan” — a random event that is completely unpredictable. (An interview with Nassim Taleb, author of the book from which the expression is derived, can be heard here.)

A police officer wearing a protective face mask, following an outbreak of the coronavirus, stands with his bike in front of a screen showing the Nikkei index outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan February 26, 2020.

“The long-term repercussion quite apart from whatever happens now is that we’ve got a source of risk we hadn’t thought about,” says Marshall W. Meyer, a Wharton management professor emeritus who consults in China. “My view is there is going to be a big adjustment of global trade patterns unless we are really lucky and [the virus] goes away very quickly. This became apparent after SARS, but SARS went away. And this may or may not go away. The real problem is people’s confidence, and in China how much political damage there will be and whether it will be contained. And there is no way to know.”

An Economic Earthquake

The damage has already been severe and has reached into a surprising array of sectors. As noted above, this week the markets responded negatively to the sharp uptick in cases outside of China, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling more than 1,000 points on Monday — its third-biggest one-day decline. (The selloff continued on Tuesday as the Dow fell another 879 points.) Major American orchestras have canceled tours in China. The cruise industry has seen the public-relations nightmare of more than 1,200 passengers quarantined aboard the Diamond Princess in Yokohama. With moneyed Chinese travelers forced to stay home, European tourism has taken a hit. “It’s seen as on par with an earthquake, a situation of emergency,” Mattia Morandi, spokesman for Italy’s ministry of culture and tourism, told The New York Times.

Supply chains in the retail sector and others have been disrupted, factories in China have gone quiet, and passenger air travel has been curtailed. Apple recently announced that it now expects to miss its next quarterly revenue forecast as a result of shuttered factories and closed retail shops in China.

“This is going to be a slow-rolling, highly consequential event,” says Meyer. “I would say stock up on aspirin and Ibuprofen now, because the base ingredients come from China. Antibiotics come from China. Hong Kong wholly depends on China for its food supply, for its water.”

Economic disruption related to the coronavirus is expected to rob the world economy of growth for the first time since 2009, according to London-based research firm Capital Economics. “We assume the virus will be contained soon, and that lost output is made up in subsequent quarters, so that world GDP reaches the level it would have done had there been no outbreak by the middle of 2021,” the firm said in a statement.

What’s the potential outcome if the virus isn’t contained? According to a report by CNBC, Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi noted on Tuesday that if the virus becomes a pandemic in Europe and the U.S., “that is the prescription for a global and U.S. recession.” Meanwhile, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell suggested that there will “very likely be some effects on [the economy of] the United States” from the current outbreak, but, in recent testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, said it’s too early to say how much.

The philanthropic sector is beginning to divert resources to the crisis. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed up to $100 million toward efforts to help strengthen detection, isolation and treatment efforts, to protect at-risk populations, and to develop vaccines, treatments and diagnostics. Hong Kong investor and philanthropist Li Ka Shing has donated $13 million to assist Wuhan, where the outbreak has been concentrated. Alibaba founder Jack Ma has committed $14.4 million, including $5.8 million to fund research into a vaccine.

‘Still Learning’

Of course, how much philanthropy eventually gets moved to combating COVID-19 depends on the eventual scale of the epidemic, and at any given point, no one has been able to say whether it has peaked.

But so far, this new coronavirus appears to be less lethal than SARS, says Susan R. Weiss, a faculty member in the department of microbiology at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Its sudden, dramatic appearance may have been a function of some special circumstances.

“It started in Wuhan, a really dense city at the crossroads of many different means of transportation, and this happened at New Year’s, when a lot of people were traveling, so this was a perfect storm,” says Weiss. “SARS started in the Guangdong Province, which is much less dense and was more easily controlled.”

On the other hand, she says, SARS spiked up over about eight months, and then disappeared, and it’s not yet known whether COVID-19 will behave the same way. “We don’t know whether it will burn out, like SARS, or come back seasonally like the flu,” she said.

This is going to be a slow-rolling, highly consequential event.

— Marshall W. Meyer

What is known at this point is the coronavirus’s nucleic acid sequence, “and that gives scientists a lot of information,” says Penn professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist Harvey Rubin. This helps in developing diagnostic tests and informs the approach to coming up with a vaccine. “What that doesn’t tell you is how transmissible it is. It doesn’t tell you whether the disease can be spread when it’s asymptomatic. We don’t yet know how transmissible it is person to person,” he says. “Right now, 99% of cases are still in China, but a small but important number are out of China, so the trajectory of this problem is still a time-dependent process…. We are still learning, and numbers are still coming in.”

Trade, Disease and the Moral High Ground

Experts have been vocal about what China has done wrong, debating whether the country recognized the epidemic soon enough and if the government’s ideological aversion to transparency delayed action and cost lives.

But what about the U.S. reaction? Is there something the U.S. can and should be doing beyond the $100 million that the U.S. government says it is prepared to spend to help China and other countries where the epidemic has spread?

“It’s already daunting for China to be coping with this, but we have a trade war going on, and it would actually be in the best interest of the U.S. to stop the trade war,” says Guillen. “It would create a lot of goodwill and would give us a good relationship as opposed to a confrontational one.”

In the meantime, he says: negotiate. “The U.S. can seek an agreement, but from a high moral ground — as in, ‘we know you are in trouble, let’s see what we can do about it.’ And if they don’t want to do what the Trump administration wants to do, the U.S. can re-impose tariffs.”

Getting to a trade solution now is also a recognition that our fates are intertwined. After the big 2011 tsunami in Japan, Guillen points out, “within weeks, many factories in the U.S. had to stop producing because they were getting components outsourced from Japan. This is a global economy. We have businesses and operations and connections with China, and if the second largest economy in the world is brought to a halt, it has the potential to disrupt things all over the world.”

Will the coronavirus crisis cause companies to look at China differently in the future?

“They are very likely to do so,” says Howard Kunreuther, co-director of Wharton’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center and professor emeritus in the operations, information and decisions department. In research with Wharton professor Michael Useem for their recent book Mastering Catastrophic Risk: How Companies Cope with Disruption, the authors contacted chief risk officers and leading executives at more than 100 S&P 500 firms on the most adverse risks they had faced in recent years.

If there is some message here, it’s that this is totally predictable.

—Harvey Rubin

“Every one of them said we are now paying much closer attention to the potential consequences of catastrophic risks than in previous years because they are happening more frequently: the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the 2011 Japan trifecta (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident) and more intense natural disasters. Firms are now engaging in enterprise risk management to reduce the likelihood and consequences of future adverse events that will affect their operations and are asking questions, such as how safe is it for us to operate here?”

Part of the rationale for these firms considering taking steps now is the high visibility of the coronavirus. “I don’t think they would be paying attention if it weren’t in the news every day,” says Kunreuther. Still, that doesn’t mean businesses should not consider taking action now given the potential for a pandemic. “The question is, what will they do? Will they undertake an assessment of the risk and ask what kind of risk-management strategies they can follow by examining the potential costs and benefits of undertaking these steps?”

“Many of us have been saying for years that it’s only a matter of time,” says Rubin, referring to the arrival of a serious epidemic or pandemic. “If we are lucky and this starts to abate and the mortality is relatively low, it’s unfortunate for the people who are sick and died, but next year or the year after something else could happen. The world needs to have not only medicine and healthcare infrastructure but also economic and information infrastructure. If there is some message here, it’s that this is totally predictable.”

A lot of attention gets paid to infectious disease outbreaks in the moment, and there is a lot of talk about vulnerabilities, preparedness and response.

“We talked about it after Zika, Ebola, during the measles outbreak, and then nobody talked about it anymore,” says Rubin. “For some reason this captures attention while it’s there, but then it goes away. People forget.”

[izzystrousers-blog]

To what extent did Spartan women benefit from being more "liberated' than their Athenian counterparts in Classical Greece?

The Oxford definition of "liberated" is someone who is "free from social conventions, especially those concerned with accepted sexual roles" (Oxford University Press, 2016). While Spartan women are so often regarded as liberated due to their freedom to own land and their access to education, something which was unheard of in Classical Athens, it must however be considered that their fundamental role remained the same as their Athenian counterparts - to bear children for the perpetuation and cohesion of the city state (Dougherty, 1991) (Breu, 2005). This essay thus intends to explore the areas of Greek society wherein Spartan women are so often considered "liberated" and to infer whether or not they actually benefited compared to their Athenian counterparts in various sections of society.

Education, marriage, sexual relations, religion, literature and the city state itself are all areas of the respective societies in which the two cohorts of Women are able to be both compared and contrasted. The general public consensus regarding Spartan Women leads one to believe that they were inherently more liberated in all mentioned areas of society; generalised statements regard the issue of gender in the Classical period as distinctly black and white - Spartan Women were liberated, Athenian women were not, despite the fact that neither groups of Women were fully liberated in the modern definition of the word. One online source claims that 'Spartan women had equal rights (to men)" (Hello World Civ, 2016); a statement that has questionable walidity given that it is a fairly basic blog post, directed at those who know little about the classical world and look to generalise in a more accessible and colloquial manner in order to increase their audience which probably targets a younger audience - an irrelevant source for this essay. Rather, scholars have come to consider the drawbacks of being a Spartan woman; Professor Mary Beard of Cambridge University argues that "what we think we know about Sparta suggests that it is a different form of oppression, not liberation" (Beard, 2016).

Indeed "what we think we know" is an integral part of Professor Beard's statement - A.W. Gomme, a professor of ancient Greek at the university of Glasgow and fellow of the British academy, argues that "there is, in fact, no literature, no art of any country, in which women are more prominent, more carefully studied and with more interest, than in tragedy, sculpture, and painting" in Ancient Greece (Hadas, 1936). Despite this, the architects of said tragedy, sculpture, painting and literature were almost always men; modern day scholars are in this way forced to perceive the Greek women they study through the tainted vision of their male counterparts, or to attempt to identify with women from two thousand years ago - an arduous task at best.

Regarding Sparta in particular, the Historian's issue becomes even more prominent given that their civilisation left almost no art behind - rather, one is left with an outsider's perspective of Sparta, which was generally regarded as alien by the rest of Greece. (Hughes, 2015). It is perhaps due to this very element of mystery that women in Ancient Greece are so heavily studied as scholars search for new ways in which they may be able to decipher how the women themselves felt in their respective civilisations. Recently for example, curse tablets have surfaced as an effective way to reveal the advice that women would seek from the gods, allowing the historian to explore the thoughts that women had about themselves and they way in which they were perceived by men (Scott, 2009). The judgments of Classicists based off of archeological evidence such as this are certainly more valuable to this essay title - they have no purpose of simplifying the ancient world but instead look to delve into the complex issue of gender and the constraints regarding gender that both societies of women were faced with and are therefore hugely reliable and apt for study.

As modern advances allow research to improve, the issue of Spartan "liberation' and their benefits as Women becomes all the more interesting and increasingly debatable; this essay will explore, in particular, the Spartan Women - the "unknown "and the "alien' civilisation - in Comparison to Athenian women and will look to conclude whether or not the prior actually benefited from their "liberation' in their alternative city state, or if what is so often regarded as liberation was actually just another form of oppression.

The City state

It is most frequently argued that Spartan women benefited due to their liberties within the city state that allowed them to be outspoken and active political personnel. This can be contrasted with the situation in Athens, which can best be summarised simply by a method of language - the term polites translates to "citizen' and can only refer to males whereas the rarely used feminine version of the noun, politis, refers to women only in relation to a male citizen (Cole, 1994). This denotes the rather non-existent role Athenian women played within the state - while they were not even allowed to be named in public, Spartan women were the only Greek women "whose statements were worthy of quotation" (Cole, 1994) (Pomeroy, 2002. pp.47). Plutarch's Sayings of Spartan Women (in which exemplary Spartan mothers' statements are documented) is a contemporary, and therefore extremely valuable, piece of evidence regarding this liberty: One Spartan Woman, Damatria, hearing her son was a Coward, was reported to have killed him, "She a Spartan lady, he a Spartan youth" (Sayings of Spartan Women, 241.1).

The fact that Spartan women were deemed Worthy of quotation by their male counterparts certainly exposes a liberty unheard of in Athenian culture; the Women were in this way at least given something of a political voice which would have then benefited their quality of life within the city state. However, it could be argued that the Sayings of Spartan Women didn't truly give the women a voice the sayings were rather limited to that of elite women, acting more as a moral guidance for the male soldiers of the city than a celebration of Women (Cole, 1994). Various other examples from the Sayings go to show this:

A Spartan Woman Who killed her son who had deserted his post declared: "He Was not my offspring... for I did not bear one unworthy of Sparta" (Sayings of Spartan Women, 241.1).

Another, whose son had fallen at his post said: "Let the cowards be mourned. I, however, bury you without a tear, my son and Sparta's" (sayings of Spartan Women, 241.2).

The sayings underline an obvious trend - exemplary mothers who refuse to tolerate their sons' cowardice in war. Anne Haward argues that Sparta was a "constitution suited to a state constantly at war" (Haward, 1996. pp. 14). This judgement is given weight due to her work having been backed by a wealth of archaeological evidence analysed in her published book: From Penelope to Poppaea, which is highly esteemed among scholars and universities. Haward is a qualified classicist and specialises in the field of gender studies in the ancient world. Thus, it can be inferred that, because Sparta revolved around the constant prospect of War, the Sayings of Spartan Women were less a means of liberating women by giving them an important voice, but were more a method of training their young men to be brave so that they would not be publicly humiliated by their own mothers.

Despite this, it could be argued that Spartan Women benefited from the liberation in the state which gave them the ability to own land and acquire their own wealth, a rather convincing argument suggested by the Classicist Breu, who concluded that, by the 4" Century BCE, Women owned two thirds of Spartan land in an article of his posted online. (Breu, 2005). This line of argument is similarly supported by Sarah Pomeroy, a distinguished professor at inter College and author of several books focusing on gender politics in the ancient world, claiming that Spartan women were among the most liberated in the ancient World due to their ability to own property and acquire wealth. In this way the role of women evolved into something that didn't just rely on being retained to the home; Spartan women could become landlords and, given that agriculture dominated the economy, they had the ability to acquire a personal wealth equal, or more than, that of their male counterparts (Pomeroy, 2002). This judgement can be solidified by recent archaeological excavations, exposing a Wealth of the gold and silver jewellery belonging to women, dedicated to the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. (Pomeroy, 2002).

This strong economic role that women possessed in Sparta once again acts in considerable contrast to that of their Athenian counterparts - who feared most that they might be divorced by their husbands, upon whom all their financial safety rested. Indeed, this appears to be a section of society in which Spartan women almost inarguably did benefit from the liberty of being allowed to control their own land. However, it must be considered how accessible this was to all Spartan women - Pomeroy also states that these privileges were confined to the elite Women of society, once more suggesting that the majority of Spartan Women may have faced the same sort of realities as their Athenian Counterparts and these "liberties' were confined to the upper classes. Pomeroy, best known for being a professor specialising in women's history in classical antiquity with both a Masters and a PHD in Classics, has also written seven academic books and won three academic awards, one of them being the City University President's Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 1995, her historical argument is in this way both reliable, convincing and relevant to this question. (Pomeroy, 2002).

Pomeroy also suggests that "Because of their influence and authority in society as a whole, to study Spartan women is not only to learn women's history, but also to have a more complete knowledge of Spartan history" (Pomeroy, 2002, pp.91). This argument is incredibly valid given that the judgement is based on a wealth of Contemporary literature and artefacts, analysed in her scholarly book Written for Universities and lecturers. It is indeed evident that Spartan Women held influence within their society - they were important for the perpetuation of the state and developed their own moral Code of what it was to be Spartan. However, to claim this is liberation from which they benefitted would be incorrect. The City State Was still wery much a man's World, where in Spartan Women could not take part or Voice their own opinions and so they could not fully benefit as females in the state-fundamentally, they had no say (O'Pry, 2012) Kay Opry, a distinguished classicist and lecturer based in the US, thus challenges Pomeroy's argument, acknowledging that the higher classes of Spartan women perhaps possessed more freedom in their city state, but it fundamentally remained as a man's World seeing as they played no active role, just as was the situation in Athens. A convincing argument due to the authors' analysis of a variety of contemporary sources such as Aristotle's Spartan Women. Moreover, their access to land without the 'safekeeping" of men certainly acts in contrast to the Athenian laws, but to use this as an argument to claim that all Spartan women benefited from this liberation Would be incorrect- this was an area of society in which only royal or elite Women may benefit, who are just a small section of the society as a whole. Thus, the city state in Sparta certainly presents differences to their Athenian counterparts but no outstanding, beneficial sense of "liberation'.

Education and upbringing

The fact that Spartan women received any sort of education at allis indeed extraordinary in the context of the Ancient world. In fact, Aristotle believed that it was for this very reason that Sparta went to ruin, which is a useful, albeit shocking, insight into the male attitude towards women in Ancient Greece (O'Pry, 2012). "Sparta was the only polis where the training and education of girls was prescribed and supported by political authority" (Pomeroy, 2002. pp. 75). Spartan girls were trained in mousique (singing, dancing and playing musical instruments) in contrast to Athenian women, whose greatest source of education was found in the art of weaving - scholars have thus come to conclude that women in Sparta did benefit due to the accessibility of an education, something that always has and always will be beneficial to the individual.

Spartan Women would have benefited from this liberty as it resulted in a healthier community - it's hard to separate education from sport in ancient Sparta and so it is no coincidence that the first woman to compete (and win) in the Olympics was Cynisca, a Spartan Woman (The Greek and Roman Civilisations, 2015). These women were in this way physically advanced due to the education which Athenian women had little access to - Aristotle claims that the Athenian equivalent was the exercise they got from Walking around the house, completing their chores (Pomeroy, 2002).

This unheard of education that the Spartan women received is what drew in critics of their state in Classical Athens; Plato (and Aristotle (Stevenson, 2009) for example, claim that, despite their physical education, Spartan women still possessed the same inferiority as other Greek women in defending their own country - suggesting they did not benefit from this liberty. However, Plutarch in his Moralias (Pomeroy, 2002) argues otherwise, claiming that Spartan women would have been able to defend themselves if they had to, suggesting that the main goal of the Spartan education for girls was to make them able to defend themselves and their children when their male counterparts were away at War. Biased as they are, these contemporary resources from ancient politicians and philosophers are invaluable to the study of gender roles in the ancient world - to discern how the male counterparts perceived both Athenian and Spartan Women is vital in assessing whether or not they intended the treatment to be "liberating" or simply beneficial to the male population.

Through Plutarch's assessment, for example, the real reason for Spartan education can be discerned and that was to protect the state in times of danger rather than to liberate Women and give them equal opportunities to men. Despite the ulterior motives of the men who prescribed Spartan Women with their education, it is undeniable that they would have benefited from a healthier and more fulfilling lifestyle accessed through the training of mousique. Though to claim that the male intention was to "liberate' Women and to ensure they benefitted would be incorrect as they still lived in a society dominated by the prospect of war and Women seemed only to be included as an "afterthought, or in the context of the actions and events of men" (O'Pry, 2012).

Sexual Relations

Sexual relations and marriage rituals are perhaps the most valuable means through which a historian might assess how much ancient Greek Women benefitted in their respective societies. Through the analysis of sexual relations, the way in which both factions of Women were regarded by their male counterparts seems to become clearest - in both societies they were inarguably identified by their wombs: objects of mass production for the cohesion of each city state.

The sports that Spartan girls partook in, briefly discussed above, have an inexplicable (and perhaps surprising) link to sexual relations within the state. The Spartan girls trained nude and were subject to public scrutiny from an extremely young age; some historians argue that the nude training encouraged homosexual relationships amongst the girls (Breu, 2005). This same emphasis on sexual appearance and appeal surfaces in the excavations of ancient Laconian mirrors which display a convex disk that allow the face, neck and cleavage to be observed. This society, where babies were taken by their maids daily to the shrine of Helen at Therapne so as to pray that they would not grow up ugly, acts in stark contrast to the Athenian society wherein women were to remain veiled at all times (Pomeroy, 2002). As opposed to Athens, "abundant fertility" (Pomeroy, 2002, pp.72) was very much encouraged, and it has been argued that both men and women partook in homosexual relationships to ensure of this (Hughes, 2015). 

At face walue, the difference between the two societies may appear similar to a modern feminist debate over sexual liberation and the female ownership over her own body. In fact, Helena Schrader, a non-fiction author and History graduate from Hamburg university, concluded that Spartan women were evidently more sexually liberated and they inarguably benefited from this - perhaps because Sparta is what seems most progressive' or most similar to a modern day society; various sources seem to enforce non-contextual judgements onto information in such a way. Schrader dubbed Spartan women as "scandalous" (Sparta Reconsidered, 1993) because of their promiscuous sexual behaviour, though this ideology is heavily disagreed upon by various other Classicists such as Anne Haward, a lecturer in Classics and former Head of Classics at New Hall School, who instead perceives the sexual relations in Sparta as no less oppressive than those in Athens, recent scholarly research has questioned just how sexually liberated one can truly consider Spartan Women, and this is most evident in the different marriage rituals, a much more convincing and reliable scholarly argument.

Contemporary accounts of the Athenian marriage rituals denote a total focus on procreation; Soranus' Gynaecology highlights that "Women are married for the sake of children and succession, and not for mere enjoyment" (MacLachlan, 2012, pp43). The ritual was an act of female submission to the man, who had the task of "curbing' his wife's "crazed' sexual promiscuity as a woman and instead ensuring that she would bear legitimate, preferably male, children (Breu, 2005). In Xenophon's Oeconomicus, he outlines the way in which to "train' a new bride which is extremely valuable in assessing what men wanted out of their Women: he claims that the proper age was 15 or less so as to ensure she was a person who knew and saw as little as possible - the main objectives of the man were to ensure she would bear children and, otherwise, she must remain discreet and not speak. (Strauss, 2004). 

However oppressive these values in Athenian marriage were, the Spartan marriage rituals illustrate a violent alternative that would have harmed Spartan women even more than the conservative rituals and expectations in Athens. The marriage ritual itself in Sparta mimicked, and sometimes genuinely was, a capture and rape - the girl would be carried off in men's clothing with her hair cut short and she was left to await her husband in a dark room where he would appear to force violent sex upon her, she would then be left in the room and was unable to appear publicly until she fell pregnant (Haward, 1996).

Though both marriage rituals were horrifically oppressive in their respective terms, the Spartan ritual in itself illustrates a violent male culture that objectified Women and utilised them to their own disposal to an even greater extent than in Athens. One source argues that "It is highly significant that Spartans condemned violence inside marriage, and understood that sex with a child is abusive." (Sparta Reconsidered, 1993). This conclusion was reached by the fact that most Spartan girls were married off when they were eighteen compared to the Athenian Women who were coveted in marriage around the age of 14-however this argument loses almost all validity due to the fact that the Spartan women were subject to multiple cases of rape and violence even if they were older. Instead. Sparta was a violent city state that revolved around a mentality of war and rape and that is highly noticeable in their marriage customs which were much more oppressive than those regarded in the Athenian customs.

Thus, increasingly, Classicists have come to conclude that the Spartan state was not beneficial and liberate towards women in terms of sexual relations and marriage, but was merely another form of oppression - seemingly much more violent than the quiet, conservative oppression of women evident in Athens (Beard, 2016). Mary Beard's view on the topic has been a particularly reliable source for my research; as professor of Classics at Cambridge University and perhaps the most notable Classicist of the 21" century and the author of best sellers such as SPQR and producer of Meet the Romans, her insight provides a relevant and contextual view on the situation. My personal correspondence with Professor Beard allowed for the opportunity to discuss in-depth how Spartan women were particularly oppressed in terms of sexual relations, thus providing both highly relevant, reliable and current information and judgment. On the contrary, Spartans were raised knowing that they would only be worth something if they were beautiful to the men who would later subject them to violence and rape for means of proCreation.

Religion

State religion was perhaps the area of both societies wherein women held their greatest influence and liberty. In Athens, Women would attend and officiate over one hundred festivals. Some, like the festival of Demeter, were exclusive only to women and females of all ages had the opportunity to participate directly in the rituals of the festivals - for example, the first three days of the thesnophoria festival saw Women performing rites to ensure that the autumn crops Would be successful (Haward, 1996) (Cole, 1994). This demonstrates a sense of authority that the Athenian women would have received from their active role in religion; an important sense of duty that they lacked elsewhere aside from the pressure to have children.

Similarly, Spartan Women would participate alongside men in the hyacinthia festival, wherein their training in the art of mousique would be displayed as they would sing, dance, Weave and even race on chariots alongside men (Pomeroy, 2002). Once again, this active role that Spartan women possessed in religion highlights almost all other areas of society wherein the direct participation of women was lacking - most notably, the political section of the city state.

As "liberating' as state religion may appear however, the reason for such active female participation in rituals and burial must be analysed before one may even argue whether Spartan or Athenian women benefited from religious activities more. In both societies, it was believed that Women should play a more active role in religion due to their links with child-bearing and fertility (Haward, 1996). Thus, what may originally be interpreted as a liberating sector of society that allows Women to forget about their fundamental role within the state, becomes clear as a reaffirmation of the firmly bound gender roles in both societies. This is a point that brings one all the way back to the introduction - Spartan and Athenian societies were immensely different, but the fundamental role of women remained the same and that can most effectively be regarded through their increasingly "liberated' role in religion.

One may argue that the two divinities of Athens were women, which surely suggests an empowering position, however scholars have come to conclude that it is no coincidence that the most important divinity, Athene, was completely defeminized - the goddess of wisdom and War, a masculine endeavour represented by her chastity (O'Neal, 1993). Through the chief divinities of Athens, men reaffirmed the strict roles for women and their value as wombs only as well as the sentiment that their sexuality must be curbed.

In similar fashion, the Spartan cults reaffirmed the society's harsh emphasis on female beauty and fertility - evident in the fact that the local divinities were Eileithyia (the goddess of childbirth) and Helen, who was renowned for her beauty (Pomeroy, 2002). One religious tale reflects the violent nature of sexual relations in Sparta - Castor and Pollux, two Spartan heroes, captured and married Hilaeria and Phoebe, two Women fleeing from them, their rape and marriage thence became a "mythical archetype" for the Spartan Wedding ritual (Pomeroy, 2002). Thus, Spartan religion reflects the oppressive and violent nature of the society towards Women as a whole and only reaffirms the argument that what Spartan Women faced was not any sort of new wave liberation, but a very different form of oppression.

Therefore, it is undeniable that an active role in religion was accessible and encouraged for both Athenian and Spartan women (perhaps even more so Spartan), something which many less valuable sources have assumed means they were inherently liberated, but it is impossible to ignore that in both societies religion only reaffirmed the oppressive gender roles that they were so tightly bound to; so while women might have benefitted from the more active role, the sentiment that they were no more than their wombs remained consistent. Thus, Spartan women perhaps benefited at face value from a more active role in a certain part of society, but in the long-term the religious cults only reaffirmed what prevented Spartan women, or Athenian Women, from being "liberated" in the first place.

Mythology and Literature

Contemporary Works available to classicists nowadays explore primarily Athenian ideals regarding women. Homer's Odyssey, for example, presents the "perfect Athenian wife' through the character of Penelope - she remains loyal to her husband for twenty years, obeys orders from her son in Odysseus' absence and is talented at Weaving (Haward, 1996). Any representation of a Spartan woman in ancient mythology and literature is through the perspective of an Athenian (or somewhere with similar ideals in Greece) and therefore taints the Historian's vision - just as almost all mythology and literature is also written by men. Helen of Sparta in mythology for example is a representation of all things Spartan - beauty and War. In Aeschylus' Agamemnon the Chorus certainly strike up fear regarding the figure of Helen; they claim her name, meaning "death", is entirely appropriate (Haward, 1996). This is evidence that a historian cannot know what a Spartan Woman was truly like - only that she was disapproved of by the rest of Greece.

Perhaps the tenuous hold that Historians have on Spartan women, due to a lack of mythology and literature Written at least by Spartan men, is what leads so many to reach the judgement that, just because they were different from Athenian women, they were more liberated than them. Hence why the title of this essay reads: 'more "liberated" - the liberation was what, at face value, appears to be but assessing in what way they benefited from this leads one to conclude whether or not this was "liberation' at all.

Conclusion

As stated in the introduction, to assess whether or not Spartan women were liberated, one must first assess whether or not they benefitted in the sectors of society wherein they are commonly believed to have been liberated. In the city state, a "voice" in politics was tenuous at best - a small percentage of exemplary women gained a voice through the Sayings of Spartar Women, but this was for the most part inaccessible to the common woman. Aside from this, they played no active role in politics. Similarly, the economy did not exclude Spartan women as in Athens and they did have the opportunity to acquire wealth, though again, this liberty was only accessible to the royal Spartan woman.

The more active role that Spartan women possessed in Education and Religion initially suggests a liberate society, but on closer inspection these sectors of the city state only reaffirm the idea that Spartan Women were primarily important to men for looking attractive to ensure they would have children for the cohesion of the state, and so while women may have benefitted in the short-term from these more "active' roles, on a grander scale it only solidified the very sentiment that caused their oppression. (Dougherty, 1991).

The fact that Spartan women enjoyed no sort of liberation and only another type of oppression is further evident in the study of sexual relations in the state. The sexual climate Was Wiolent and revolved around the idea of rape and capture when regarding Women - those who argue that Spartan women benefitted because they were married off at an appropriate age as opposed to the 14-year-old Athenian bride fail to recognise that Spartan women were set up for public scrutiny from the very day they were born (Pomeroy, 2002). This culture of violent sexual relations and the objectification of Women can be seen in its epitome in the Spartan marriage rituals - there is perhaps no clearer sign that Spartan women were subject to oppression just as all other women in Greece were, only in a different fashion (Harvey, 1984).

Research goes to prove that this is an issue still heavily debated by Classicists - many continue to argue that "Spartan women were in many ways among the most liberated of the ancient Greek world" (Zuckerman, 2000) whereas others conclude that Spartan women simply faced "another form of oppression" (Beard, 2016). The issue faces such great debate due to the, at times, tenuous evidence that remains of Sparta. A variety of sources have proved to be of varying relevance to the topic titleoversimplified websites lack evidence and depth to prove their claims that Sparta was a new wave state for Women's rights whereas other, more academic, sources sometimes lack the currency to assess in enough depth the different civilisations, as more recent excavations have prowed extremely helpful to the study of Women.

The more relevant and current academic resources agree with the thesis that Spartan Women were not liberated. Areas of society wherein Spartan women did perhaps benefit, on a larger scale, only reinforced the gender roles that lead to their oppression- their education was to make them better wives and child bearers, their role in religion similarly stemmed back to their fundamental position as wombs for the state. Just because the Spartan society was so different from Athens does not mean that their women were liberated relative to in Athenians; Spartan women faced oppression in Greece just as all women did - but the oppression correlated to the alternative Way in which Sparta functioned.

[ruminativerabbi]

Bahya Steps Up

Last week, I invited readers to join me in peering through the mist to catch a glimpse of King Kohelet stepping up to take his place on the debaters’ stage amidst the top dozen people vying for the Democratic nomination and then to join me in imagining what he might have had to say if he had been there in person and not merely as a figment of our collective imagination. I tried to come up with several distinct lessons he might well have wished to teach, but all turned out to be variations on the same theme: that humility is the surest sign of wisdom and that, therefore, the least qualified leader or would-be leader will almost always be the individual the most of sure of him or herself, the proudest of his or her accomplishments, and the most certain that no one could possibly know more or do better than him- or herself. And then, life occasionally actually imitating art, I opened the newspaper the other day and found myself reading about a scientific study published just last summer in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Research that detailed the latest thinking on degree to which humility is not merely a virtue (like patience or generosity) but rather a critical personality trait that truly mentally healthy people cannot do without. (The original journal article has to be purchased—and for an exorbitant $35—to be read on- or off-line, but to see the New York Times article by Benedict Carey about the journal piece, click here.)

It makes sense too: in a world of highly polarized attitudes towards everything, people possessed of the kind of humility highlighted in the study turned out to be less dogmatic, less judgmental, less aggressive, and less likely to fall prey to what the author calls ideological or political polarization. They’re also less likely to fail in their committed relationships—which only makes sense given the need for compromise in such relationships. Perhaps even more to the point, the study found that the humble among us are more likely to have the psychological resources “to shake off grudges, suffer fools patiently, and forgive” themselves for inadvertent missteps or errors of judgment. In that regard, I can also recommend a very interesting essay by Peter Wehner that came out in 2017 (click here) about the worth of humility from a spiritual point of view. (Wehner writes specifically in Christian terms, but Jewish readers will find his views very resonant and highly applicable to themselves.)

I have my own odd relationship with the concept. One of my own culture heroes, although not one I’ve written much about in this space, lived in Spain a cool thousand years ago in the first half of the eleventh century. And, as the author of the first Jewish book devoted solely to ethics and ethical issues, he deserves to be far more famous than he actually is. There are a few reasons for this. First, my guy, Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda, is regularly confused—including by people who should certainly know better—with Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa, who lived about two and a half centuries later, and who became known as one of the greatest biblical commentators of his day. So maybe it was inevitable that the two Bahya’s would get confused with each other, but it’s a shame that that happens: Bahya ben Asher was insightful, creative, and intelligent, but Bahya ibn Pakuda was one of the handful of true greats: a giant in terms of his incisive intellect, his ability to synthesize diverse material, his literary ability…and the humility he brought to his writing desk even when working on a book that he could not possibly have imagined readers a millennium later still considering novel, interesting, and not even slightly stale. And then there’s the matter of language: Bahya wrote not even in regular Arabic or in Hebrew, but in Judeo-Arabic, the specific dialect of Arabic spoken by the Jews of Spain during what we in our day have taken to reference as the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. So that means his book is read today in its original language by more or less no one at all.

When I first began to read Jewish classics, I was still in college. And in my junior year, which I slightly unexpectedly spent in France studying Hebrew, I found myself in a class devoted to reading the 1950 French-language translation by André Chouraqui. After a few weeks, I was completely in his thrall. To say that Bahya became my only friend that year is to exaggerate. (I wasn’t that lonely.) But he was a real (if spectral) presence in my life that year…and a very supportive one at that. I don’t know where other people read Bahya, but I read him each night before bed. And I carried his book around with me too, pausing to read a few paragraphs whenever the opportunity presented itself. What can I say? Friends hang out together! (Maybe I really was that lonely.)

It was from Bahya that I learned about humility as something to be cultivated and sought after. In the sixth chapter of his book, which is wholly concerned with the topic, he writes that “one should always show humility toward others and divest oneself of all pride for the sake of showing honor to God, casting off all sense of loftiness, all arrogance and self-importance…both in private and in the midst of a crowd.” And then he goes on to explain how Scripture makes a point of requiring this particularly of people in leadership positions. And now we get to my point for the week.

Aaron, for example, was the High Priest of all Israel—but he was not above cleaning the ashes off the altar each morning and delivering them to the dump personally as a way of reminding himself to avoid haughtiness and arrogance. Similarly, the Bible reports that when the Holy Ark was finally brought into the City of David, King David himself offered up the burnt-offerings and danced in the street to remind himself that, when all was said and done, he was just as unworthy to sit on the throne of Israel as any other mortal would also have been.

And then Bahya goes on to describe the true leader specifically in terms of the degree to which such a person successfully cultivates a sense of natural humility, speaking as little as possible, declining ever to pontificate in public, always avoiding vulgar language, never behaving in a tawdry, tasteless, or crude way in front of others, and instantly intervening when someone is being treated unjustly. True leaders, he goes on, always seek to avoid public praise and never pass up an opportunity to own up to their own moral or ethical errors. “Such people,” Bahya writes, “never blame the ones who blame them (for having done things that they did in fact do), nor would they ever be angry with whomever uncovered the misdeed in question. On the contrary, the true leaders will always say to an accuser, ‘O my friend, what is this evil act of mine that you know of in comparison to those of which you are ignorant and which have been concealed by God for my sake for such a long time? Were my deeds and sins known to you, you would run away….” That, Bahya says, is what it means to embrace humility as a personal virtue...and to qualify as a national leader.

What would our American landscape be like if the people vying for political office were to take these words to heart—actively seeking forgiveness for past missteps, owning up to an inability to know with certainty where any chosen path will eventually lead, openly admitting ignorance and shortsightedness, and actively—and vigorously—seeking the counsel of the wise when decisions have to be made instead of relying solely on an inflated sense of their own ability magically to know the unknowable? I can answer that question myself: a lot more appealing and a lot healthier than the endless contest we now endure to see which candidate or would-be candidate can speak with more brazen certainty about the future, can be more disdainful of his or her rivals’ points of view and opinions, and who can be as little self-effacing as possible in an attempt to convince the undecided voter to choose him or her as our nation’s next leader.

Bahya’s book is almost a full thousand years old. Its author has been gone from the world for almost that long. His precise dates are unknown, as is the site of his grave and the details of his personal life—whom he married, how many children he had, what became of them, etc. He is hardly known to the non-Jewish world at all, but even within the world of Jewish letters there are only very few who can say that they have read his book from beginning to end even once, let alone many times. If only our would-be leaders were among them!

[globalvoices]

In A Greek Refugee Camp: A Volunteer's Notebook

By Mai El-Mahdy

Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Syrian refugees in Greece. By now there are thousands of blog posts, newspaper articles and eyewitness accounts that tell the stories of entire families drowning in the ocean, in desperate hope for a life free of warfare and poverty. I’m sure there are even more on those who eventually survived the ferocious waves, only to move into inhumane, “temporary” camps where they end up spending years. But for better or for worse, I’m not going to talk about the refugees, the lives they left behind in Syria or how they ended up in Greece. I want to talk about the current conditions and the role—or lack thereof—of those of us who try to help them, in bringing an end to this humanitarian crisis.

Recently I spent a couple of weeks at Greece’s Ritsona camp, a hub for five different humanitarian NGOs, alongside the UN operations. Ritsona is an old military base located outside Chalkida, the chief town on the island of Euboea, about an hour’s drive north of the centre of Athens. Its population is roughly two-thirds Syrian, with the remaining third made up of Kurds, Iraqis, and Afghans.

Sunken dignity

One of the harsh realities about life in the camps that is hard to fathom, let alone survive, is the absence of self-respect—dignity that has dropped so low it’s as if it was eaten up by the fierce waves before sinking to the bottom. It’s the dented sense of dignity that makes a person happy to move out of a tent into some makeshift caravan container box that becomes your “temporary” shelter for months and months. It’s the type of dignity that is all but lost when your entire livelihood is at the mercy of NGO workers who, through their authority and the decisions they make on people’s behalf, teach the refugees to accept the little they get, and be happy. Why do this, when these people are already broken? Do we volunteers always know what’s best for them? Would we allow others to make similar decisions on our behalf?

It’s not about freedom of choice; it’s not about allowing people the space to make their own decisions and mistakes. It’s about self-determination. Refugees take every single imaginable risk, relying on factors way beyond anyone’s control, only to arrive—miraculously—at a camp and submit to someone else’s decision-making, regardless of how good or bad those decisions are.

“Let’s teach English!” Everyone needs and wants to learn English, right? “Let’s buy toys for children,” overlooking the desires of parents, and the children themselves. Queuing up for food or clothes is part of the harsh reality of accepting that, due to circumstances beyond your control, you have become less valuable of a human being.

Refugees don’t want to queue for ages for food or clothes: they want to be treated as human beings, just like a black man in Apartheid South Africa, a Palestinian in the face of the Israeli occupation, or a woman anywhere in the world today. Part of the pain is acknowledging, while you stand in line, that few outside of your war zone would ever have to endure this or even entertain the thought. It is the frustration of being offered the non-choice of either being grateful that you’re in a queue with food at the end of it, or of being featured in a photo shared on social media that makes people feel sorry for you.

Perhaps we should look at the treatment of refugees as a right they have earned for themselves, not as charity that we choose to give to them. Perhaps we should focus our efforts on allowing them to fight for themselves. Perhaps it is simply about paving the way for their self-emancipation, regardless of where it leads them, and especially regardless of where it leaves us. We need to focus on educating them about their rights based on the country they are relocated, caring for their health, providing education for them and their children, etc.

Perhaps we should look at them the way we want them to look at us: with dignity and self-respect.

Are we really helping?

It’s funny how, as volunteers, we’re expected to arrive on the scene and push, along with everyone else, to get the wheels in motion. As though we’re not part of the story, but instead temporary outsiders brought in to perform a specific mission. But whether we like it or not, we are part of the narrative and influence it, significantly.

As individuals, we struggle with our egos. It’s one thing to recognize that—and in fact, very few volunteers are strong enough to do even that. Suppressing our egos, however, is a totally different story. It’s probably inevitable that volunteers find it easier to feed their egos than feed the needy. And the reward is so tempting that many forget to stop for a minute and ask themselves: are we really helping?

It’s no wonder so many volunteers pay special attention to children, who become quickly attached. But how does that help?

Volunteers can’t help but feel superior. In the camps they stand out like a sore thumb, and that’s not always unintentional. Volunteers often see themselves as providers of a valuable service, as making a great sacrifice of time and expertise. And they expect others to be gracious and remind them what great human beings they are for doing what they do.

But it’s not a service—it’s the refugees’ right. And this shouldn’t be debatable.

Once, at one of the stores where we shopped for the people of Ritsona camp with donated funds, I tried to bargain with the cashier to get more for my donated buck. The cashier, a fellow Egyptian making a living across the Mediterranean, agreed to “hook me up.” But instead of reducing the cost, she offered to write me an invoice for a higher sum. According to her, many volunteers and NGO workers accepted the fake invoices and pocketed the difference, so it was clear to her that I was new to this. And no, she did not budge on the price.

That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Some volunteers finance their travel out of the donations they receive. In spite of pleas for greater transparency, few NGOs actually publish the details of their finances. And even fewer donors ask for the details. If it’s change we’re after, this is probably a good place to start.

In my opinion, the best way to help refugees is by bypassing the NGOs altogether. It’s not difficult for us to connect directly with refugees. They’re human, just like us, just with different circumstances that suck. Treating them as patients with some disease or disability doesn’t help.

A friend of mine has a different take on this. He relates the story of a German doctor, an older gentleman, extremely professional and meticulous about his work. It’s his job to treat patients to the best of his ability given the facilities provided. From morning till night this doctor receives patients, diagnoses them, treats them. He doesn’t speak the language of the country where he works, and is very distant, almost cold. But he treats every single person he comes across, and he sets up and develops the medical facility and trains the workers so that the project can sustain itself after his departure. Many might not know him, care about him, or even remember him, though he is the one who directly helped and advanced the community. No credit. No showiness. No emotion. Just pure problem-solving.

I don’t necessarily disagree. NGOs impose strict rules on volunteers, one of which prohibits staying at the camp past 5pm. I hated this rule, so after a couple of weeks, I moved out of NGO housing and into the camp. I stayed with a refugee friend and her two daughters in their container. I would never argue that I was living their life, but I will say that I was observing it through a sharper lens.

While I agree that being distant and professional may be highly efficient and effective, I think that closeness also helps. Yes, we eventually leave; and sure, we may invest more time and effort in forming emotional bonds with the refugees than in providing tangible deliverables. And I won’t deny that I’ve learned more from the refugees about the Syrian cultural and political context than I’ve shared my own knowledge.

But by establishing close bonds we remind others—and ourselves—that they are human. And we become more human in the process.

Hospitals Don't Always Speak Your Language

The day to-day medical needs of Ritsona camp residents, of which there was an abundance, were left pretty much unattended. In emergencies, however, the Greek National Emergency Medical Services (EKAB, Ethniko Kentro Amesis Voitheias) would transport residents of the camp to and from the nearest hospital.

No one likes to go to the hospital, but when you’re a Syrian in a foreign country, it’s even worse than you imagine. Refugees are immersed in a sea of loneliness and fear of the unknown. You can see it in their eyes. And the harsh conditions of the journey to the camp leaves the majority of children, especially, with severe respiratory problems.

Many of the Greek doctors, however, didn’t even speak English nor did they have translators, and most patients could express themselves only in either Arabic or Kurdish. Often, residents would spend hours awaiting emergency care at the hospital, only to lose hope of ever understanding what they needed to do to get treatment, and leave.

At the camp my Arabic came in handy, as my job was to accompany the patients. Last May one of the NGOs at Ritsona pioneered a unique initiative dubbed “Hospital Runs”; that was the team I worked with. It’s a program organized in collaboration with the Red Cross that operates under the license of the Greek Army. They provide medical transportation, English, Greek and Arabic interpretation, and intercultural and medical assistance. The team also helps with bureaucratic procedures.

I was proud to be a member of that team. Each day we’d hop over to Chalkida or trek all the way to Athens, returning in the evening after having handled whatever problems, cases and complications had been thrown at us.

Sometimes the hospital staff made us feel unwelcome, scolding us about coming in with muddy shoes, indifferent to the fact that the camp is basically built on mud. I remember arriving at the hospital one day to find a young woman, clearly Arab and most probably from the camp, all alone, with nobody attending to her. She had clearly given up on trying to communicate or to save herself from whatever pain had piled on top of everything she had brought over to the continent. She gave me her details and the number of a loved one, so that I could communicate to them in the event she didn’t make it. Thankfully, and against the odds, she survived.

I guess I just can't fathom how borders and bodies of water can ultimately decide who's granted the opportunity to climb to the top, and who will be left to drown, and sink to the bottom.

Mai El-Mahdy is an Ireland-based Egyptian who works in tech. She was one of the millions who took part in the #Jan25 revolution, and she looks forward to being part of the next one.